Central Europe and the European Union: The Meaning of Europe

Central European History and the European Union The Meaning of Europe

Edited by

Stanislav J. Kirschbaum

Central European History and the European Union

Studies in Central and Eastern Europe Edited for the International Council for Central and East European Studies by Roger E. Kanet, University of Miami, USA Titles include: Graeme Gill (editor) POLITICS IN THE RUSSIAN REGIONS Roger E. Kanet (editor) RUSSIA Re-Emerging Great Power Rebecca Kay (editor) GENDER, EQUALITY AND DIFFERENCE DURING AND AFTER STATE SOCIALISM Stanislav J. Kirschbaum (editor) CENTRAL EUROPEAN HISTORY AND THE EUROPEAN UNION The Meaning of Europe Katlijn Malfliet, Lien Verpoest and Evgeny Vinokurov (editors) THE CIS, THE EU AND RUSSIA Challenges of Integration Stephen Velychenko (editor) UKRAINE, THE EU AND RUSSIA History, Culture and International Relations Forthcoming titles include: John Pickles (editor) GLOBALIZATION AND REGIONALIZATION IN POST-SOCIALIST ECONOMIES Common Economic Spaces of Europe John Pickles (editor) STATE AND SOCIETY IN POST-SOCIALIST ECONOMIES Stephen White (editor) MEDIA, CULTURE AND SOCIETY IN PUTIN’S RUSSIA Stephen White (editor) POLITICS AND THE RULING GROUP IN PUTIN’S RUSSIA Thomas Bremer (editor) RELIGION AND THE CONCEPTUAL BOUNDARY IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE Stephen Hutchings (editor) RUSSIA AND ITS OTHER(S) ON FILM Screening Intercultural Dialogue Joan DeBardeleben (editor) THE BOUNDARIES OF EU ENLARGEMENT Studies in Central and Eastern Europe Series Standing Order ISBN 0-230-51682-3 hardcover (outside North America only) You can receive future titles in this series as they are published by placing a standing order. Please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address, the title of the series and the ISBN quoted above Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England

Central European History and the European Union The Meaning of Europe Edited by

Stanislav J. Kirschbaum Department of International Studies, Glendon College, York University, Canada

Editorial matter, selection, introduction and conclusion © Stanislav J. Kirschbaum 2007 All remaining chapters © respective authors 2007 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First Published 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillian Ltd. Macmillian® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries ISBN-13: 978-0-230-54937-1 ISBN-10: 0-230-54937-3

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Contents Preface

vii

General Editor’s Preface

viii

Contributors

xiii

Chronology

xvi

Maps of Europe

xix

Introduction Stanislav J. Kirschbaum

1

Part I Whence Central Europe?

9

1.

European Roots: the Case of Slovakia Stanislav J. Kirschbaum

11

2.

Federalism in Central Europe: Past and Present Francesco Leoncini

23

3.

Toward an Open Society: Reflections on the 1989 Revolution in Eastern Europe Oskar Gruenwald

Part II

The Legacy of the National State

32

61

4.

The Secularized Cult of St Stephen in Modern Hungary Juliane Brandt

63

5.

The Quest for a Symbol – Wenceslas and the Czech State Stefan Samerski

81

6.

Moldavian Prince Stephen and Romania Krista Zach

92

7.

The Invention of Modern Pol´and: Pil´sudski and the Politics of Symbolism Mieczysl´ aw B.B. Biskupski

8.

An Ethnic Poland: a Failure of National Self-determination John J. Kulczycki v

102 123

vi Central European History and the European Union

Part III 9.

The Challenges of EU Membership

Intellectual and Political ‘Europe’: Rupture or Continuity in Central Europe? Bas¸ak Z. Alpan

10.

Euroscepticism in Central Europe Laure Neumayer

11.

Europeanization and Gender Equality in the Czech Republic and Slovakia Ingrid Röder

143 145 159

179

12.

Poland and the EU Constitutional Convention An Schrijvers

189

13.

The EU and Interculturality in Croatia after 2000 Mojmir Krizan

215

Conclusion Stanislav J. Kirschbaum

237

Index

249

Preface Over a period of almost three decades as a Canadian academic studying Central Europe, I was first given the opportunity to publish a collaborative work on the region in 1988, in a volume entitled East European History; this was followed ten years later by Historical Reflections on Central Europe. Both volumes represented, as the eclectic selection of articles indicates, a desire to present, understand and explain various historical events or factors that marked Central Europe. The first volume still reflected the conditions of the Cold War, but the second already signalled the reappearance, as a distinct geopolitical reality, of that part of Europe on which this volume focuses. And while this volume still looks at the past, it does so with a view to the future. Each author brings out an issue or a theme that marks Central Europe today, and together they suggest the need for the European Union to embark on a process of defining the ‘meaning of Europe’, so that its citizens need not identify only with the unification process, but may also perceive an end product that represents more than just a successful economic and administrative arrangement run by bureaucratic elites. All three volumes arose from presentations at a world congress of the International Council for Central and East European Studies, of which I have the privilege of being the secretary since 1980. My thanks go to all the contributors to this volume for sharing the objective espoused, even if some may be sceptical about the possibility of finding a process in the European Union that will bring about the ‘meaning of Europe’. I am grateful for their patience, understanding and cooperation in preparing the manuscript. Oskar Gruenwald’s chapter is reprinted from the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies XVIII (1/2) (2006) 25–56, where it first appeared. My thanks also go to Carolyn King of the Cartographic Office of the Department of Geography at York University in Toronto for the maps that outline our theme. Last but not least my thanks go to Gemma d’Arcy Hughes, Editorial Assistant for Politics and International Studies at Palgrave Macmillan, for guiding me through the editorial process. Stanislav J. Kirschbaum Toronto

vii

General Editor’s Preface When the International Council for Central and East European Studies (ICCEES) was founded at the first international and multidisciplinary conference of scholars working in this field, held in Banff, Alberta, Canada, on 4–7 September 1974, it was given the name International Committee for Soviet and East European Studies (ICSEES). Its major purpose was to provide for greater exchange between research centres and scholars around the world who were devoted to the study of the USSR and the Communist states and societies of Eastern Europe. These developments were the main motivation for bringing together the very different national organizations in the field and for forming a permanent committee of their representatives, which would serve as an umbrella organization, as well as a promoter of closer cooperation. Four national scholarly associations launched ICSEES at the Banff conference: the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), the National Association for Soviet and East European Studies in Great Britain (NASEES), the British Universities’ Association of Slavists (BUAS), and the Canadian Association of Slavists (CAS). Over the past three decades six additional congresses have been held: in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, 1980; Washington, USA, 1985; Harrogate, UK, 1990; Warsaw, Poland, 1995; Tampere, Finland, 2000; and Berlin, Germany, 2005. The next congress is scheduled for 2010 in Stockholm, Sweden. The original four national associations that sponsored the first congress have been joined by an additional 17 full and six associate member associations, with significantly more than a thousand scholars participating at each of the recent congresses. It is now a little over three decades since scholars felt the need to coordinate the efforts in the ‘free world’ to describe and analyse the Communist political systems, their societies and economies, and East–West relations in particular. Halfway through this period, the Communist system collapsed, the region that was the object of study was reorganized, and many of the new states that emerged set out on a path of democratic development, economic growth and, in many cases, inclusion in Western institutions. The process turned out to be complex, and there were setbacks. Yet, by 2004, the European Union as well as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) had welcomed those post-Communist states that had met all the requirements for membership. Not all the applicant states achieved this objective; but the process is ongoing. For, this reason, perhaps even more than before, the region that encompassed the former Communist world demands study, explanation and analysis, as both centripetal and centrifugal forces are at work in each state and across the region. We are most fortunate that the community of viii

General Editor’s Preface ix

scholars addressing these issues now includes many astute analysts from the region itself.

The impact of Central Europe on the European Union, and the importance of historical context During the decade-long negotiations between the European Union (EU) and the post-Communist states of Central Europe concerning membership for the latter, one of the objectives of the former was to use the magnet of membership as a tool to influence political, economic and even social and cultural developments in those countries seeking to join this elite Western club. As Milada Anna Vachudova and many others have noted in a host of analyses, through the promise of eventual EU membership the countries of Western Europe have had a substantial impact on the political, economic and political redefinition and restructuring of their eastern neighbours.1 Slovakia, for example, was left behind in the first round of NATO expansion and largely ignored by the EU as a potential member. Only after the electorate responded to NATO and EU criticisms of domestic political developments under Prime Minister Vladimír Meciar by ousting him, followed by significant shifts in both domestic and foreign policy, was Slovak membership in either organization considered seriously.2 However, virtually no one has examined seriously, or even posed clearly, questions concerning the reverse impact of the relationship – namely, the influence that the entry of ten generally lessdeveloped post-Communist states of Central and South-Eastern Europe and the Baltic has already exerted and is likely to continue to exert in the future on the nature of the European Union itself. In one area in particular it has already become evident that the new states have come down clearly on the side of the UK, Denmark and other EU members on the issue of the central importance of the transatlantic security relationship with the USA and will not support the development of a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) that would come into conflict with the long-term relationship of Europe and the USA within the NATO security system.3 This has resulted in a substantial shift in the positions likely to emerge as dominant on matters related to European foreign and security policy and to relations with both the Russian Federation in the East and the USA in the West. Poland and Romania, for example, simply do not view their long-term security concerns from the same perspective as does France or even Germany. Therefore, they see the US connection as central to their long-term security. The new Central European members of the EU also bring to the organization different perspectives on the nature of the organization itself. After decades, even centuries, of domination by others, they are not enthusiastic about the emergence of a European Union in which national differences disappear and supranational institutions hold sway. In other words, most of the new EU members are more interested in focusing on those aspects of EU integration

x Central European History and the European Union

that have characterized the organization in the past and that are expected to contribute to the economic welfare and growth of that part of Europe that has not experienced comparable economic and technological advance over most of the past half-millennium. These are in many respects the very issues that lie at the heart of the present volume. Stanislav J. Kirschbaum and his colleagues are concerned much more than are most students of contemporary post-Communist political and economic developments in the area, including EU expansion, about the past, its influence on the present, and its likely impact on the future evolution both of the states of Central Europe and of the broader institutions of the EU itself. They describe societies for which historical roots – expressed in part through the symbolism associated with important saints and kings – are an immediate and integral part of contemporary identity. They make clear that it is simply not possible to understand the modern sense of national identity and purpose of the peoples of this region without reference to the past, including the medieval period, to key historical figures, and to myths of native kingdoms that originated and flourished long ago. Unless one understands the place that medieval Kosovo plays in the Serbian myth of nationhood that underlies the contemporary Serbian sense of identity and the competing myths of nation- and statehood that characterize the religious and cultural borderlands of Central and Eastern Europe, one will have serious problems making sense of some important aspects of contemporary political developments throughout the region. That is why, in my view, so many students of comparative politics, who rely almost exclusively on socioeconomic, demographic and electoral data as the tools of their analysis, find it difficult to provide meaningful explanations of developments in this and other regions of the world. As important as systematic social science research has become in helping us to understand regularities in social and political behaviour, they can provide only a partial picture of contemporary political reality. An understanding of the legacies of the past – legacies, however, that are intimately intertwined with current views of identity and reality – must guide and complement interpretations of what are often viewed as the measurable ‘hard data’ essential for systematic quantitative analysis, if the analyst hopes to gain more than a superficial snapshot of the real world. In a region such as Central Europe, where the past is ever present, this point is arguably even more relevant than it is in other parts of the modern world. No recent author deals more effectively with the issue of historical symbols and their role in contemporary political struggles than Stuart Kaufman, who notes that they represent a sort of historical shorthand that brings to mind among whole populations the glories of the past and the inequities visited upon them and their ancestors over the course of the past millennium.4 Although Kaufman’s focus is on the relationship between the symbols of national identity and the explosion of ethnic conflict in former Yugoslavia and the former USSR, his point has broader relevance. As the essays in this

General Editor’s Preface xi

volume make evident, King St Stephen of Hungary, King St Wenceslas of Bohemia, and Prince St Stephen of Moldavia, as well as the much more recent General Pil´tsudski of Poland, are not merely important figures in the history of the peoples of Central Europe. They are also political symbols, constantly reinterpreted and updated for current generations, of the importance and greatness of the peoples concerned, symbols that also point to the need to protect the group against the incursions of outsiders. Assuming the contemporary importance of the past and of the great historical symbols of the various new Central European members of the EU, what impact can we expect these quite different historical contexts from those of the ‘original’ 15 members of the EU to have on the future development of the organization? As noted already, it is evident that the post-Communist states for the most part bring with them a decidedly pro-US and transatlanticist perspective in their foreign policy – as a counter to the views of many of the original 15 EU members. It is difficult to see the new members committing themselves to an integrated foreign and defence policy for the EU, if that brings with it a weakening of the NATO link – a prospect that is virtually inevitable. As several of the authors in the present volume note, there is a second important area in which the post-Communist states are likely to affect the future of the EU. Most of them, though strongly committed to economic integration and to closing the developmental gaps between the Western and Eastern ‘halves’ of the continent, are not supportive of political developments likely to submerge these societies in a federal EU that would challenge their identities. Decades of Soviet domination and, in most cases, centuries of foreign rule have made the attraction of national self-determination an important issue, at least for the foreseeable future. This obviously will affect future discussions of an EU constitution and the nature of the development of the organization itself. Most of these countries are likely to ally themselves on this issue with the UK, which continues to oppose the strengthening of the supranational, as opposed to intergovernmental, aspects of the EU. As the new members of the EU interact with the rest of the community, it is already becoming evident that some of the central elements of democratic governance that underlie accepted behaviour in the European Union are interpreted quite differently. Freedom of religion and the role that organized religion plays in the political process, for example, are viewed quite differently in countries such as Romania and Poland than they are across the original EU-15. Obviously, historical factors have influenced the positions of those countries, which originally created the European Coal and Steel Community and its successor organizations, as well as those who over the next four decades joined and contributed to the emergence of the EU. But, for the most part, their history – as least for the larger and more dominant of the EU members – was a very different one from that of the new Eastern members. Most important, no doubt, were the transitions of the second half of the last century when the countries of Western Europe were evolving into a security community in

xii Central European History and the European Union

which the very idea of military conflict among them became unthinkable. That process did not occur in the East, where all were part of a Soviet imperial system. This contributed to the fact that the conflicting territorial and cultural identities remained unresolved and that centuries of foreign political, economic and cultural domination left most of the region far less developed, in all senses of the term, than most of the existing EU members. These conflicts are still left to be resolved within the context of the EU itself. The nations and states of Central Europe will, of course, decide for themselves how to resolve many of these questions and what contributions they will make to the evolution of the EU. The input that scholars can make is to choose and explain the factors that they believe are germane to this process. This collection of essays opens the door in that direction; it is a provocative and, in many respects, pioneering work whose aim is to have academics, policy makers and other concerned individuals ‘think beyond the box’ of institutional enlargement, recognize the impact of the past, and launch a debate on the meaning of Europe. Roger E. Kanet

Notes 1 This argument is developed quite explicitly by Milada Anna Vachudova in Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration after Communism (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). 2 See, for example, Eva S. Jenkins, Slovakia’s Journey to NATO (Bratislava: PTK ECHO Publishing, 2005). 3 See the relevant country chapters in Tom Lansford and Blagovest Tashev, eds, Old Europe, New Europe and the US: Renegotiating Transatlantic Security in the Post 9/11 Era. (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2005). 4 Stuart J. Kaufman, Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic War (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001).

Contributors Ba¸sak Z. Alpan is a doctoral candidate and a research student at the University of Birmingham, Department of Political Science and International Studies, UK. She earned her M.Sc. degree from Middle East Technical University, Centre for European Studies, Ankara, Turkey. Mieczysl aw B.B. Biskupski holds the S.A. Blejwas Endowed Chair in Polish ´ History at Central Connecticut State University, USA. His recent books include Poles and Jews in North America (with Antony Polonsky) (2006), Ideology, Politics, and Diplomacy (2003) and The History of Poland (2000). He has been awarded the ‘Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit’ for distinguished scholarship by the Republic of Poland and is inscribed on the ‘Honour Role of Polish Science’ by the Ministry of Education in Warsaw. He is completing a study on Hollywood’s treatment of the Poles. Juliane Brandt is a researcher at the Institute for German Culture and History in South East Europe (IKGS) at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich. She worked and taught at Humboldt University in Berlin, the University of Leipzig, ELTE Budapest and Mikolc University in Hungary. She is a specialist in the social and cultural history of South-East Europe and the social history of religion. She has published numerous articles and surveys especially on the history of Protestantism in Hungary, religious and national identities, but also the development of literature and cultural politics after 1945. Oskar Gruenwald is editor of the Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary and Interfaith Dialogue and co-founder of its sponsoring Institute for Interdisciplinary Research and the International Christian Studies Association (www.JIS3.org). He is the author of The Yugoslav Search for Man: Marxist Humanism in Contemporary Yugoslavia ale of Human Rights in Yugoslavia (1983) and co-editor with Karen Rosenblum-C (1986). He has published articles in many scholarly journals and chapters in books. He is listed in Who’s Who in Theology and Science (1996). Stanislav J. Kirschbaum is Professor of International Studies and Political Science at York University, Glendon College in Toronto, Canada. He is a specialist in Central European politics and the author of A History of Slovakia. The Struggle for Survival (2nd edition, 2005) and Historical Dictionary of Slovakia (2nd edition, 2007) as well as other volumes and numerous articles on Central Europe. Since 1980, he has held the position of Secretary of the International Council for Central and East European Studies, and in 2002 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. xiii

xiv Central European History and the European Union

Mojmir Kriz an graduated in electrical engineering (1967) and the social sciences (1982). He had a teaching assignment at the University of Göttingen, Germany, between 1981 and 1991, focusing on Eastern Europe, Communism and Marxism–Leninism. Since then he has been a freelancer, and his interest has shifted to modern theories of justice and the problems of political and social coexistence and collaboration of different cultural, traditional, language and religious groups. He is the author of Vernunft, Modernisierung und die Gesellschaftsordnungen sowjetischen Typs. Eine kritische Interpretation der bolschewistischen Ideologie (1991), Pravednost u kulturno pluralnim drustvima ( Justice in Culturally Plural Societies) (2000), as well as a number of scientific and other articles on related topics. John J. Kulczycki is Professor Emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago, USA. He is a specialist in the history of Central Europe, particularly Polish–German relations. He is the author of The Polish Coal Miners’ Union and the German Labor Movement in the Ruhr, 1902–1934: National and Social Solidarity (1997); The Foreign Worker and the German Labor Movement: Xenophobia and Solidarity in the Coal Fields of the Ruhr, 1871–1914 (1994); School Strikes in Prussian Poland, 1901–1907: The Struggle over Bilingual Education (1981) and numerous articles. Francesco Leoncini is Professor of Slavic History and of Central European History at the Università Ca’ Foscari di Venezia, Venice, Italy. He is a specialist in Bohemian history and politics. His publications are on the Sudeten German problem, the opposition in the Soviet bloc, the Czecho-Slovak Spring, and T.G. Masaryk’s thought. His most recent book is L’Europa centrale. Conflittualità e progetto. Passato e presente tra Praga, Budapest e Varsavia (2003). He is an honorary member of the Masaryk Society in Prague. Laure Neumayer is Assistant Professor of Political Science at l’Université de Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne. She is a specialist in European integration and Central European politics. She has published L’enjeu européen dans les transformations postcommunistes – Pologne, Hongrie, République tchèque 1989–2004 (2006) and numerous articles on the enlargement of the European Union. She is currently preparing a volume on reconciliation policies in Central and Eastern Europe. Ingrid Röder is a Ph.D. researcher at the Jean Monnet Centre for European Studies at the University of Bremen, Germany. After receiving a Master’s degree in Gender and International Relations at the University of Bristol, UK, she entered the doctoral programme at the University of Bremen. Her dissertation examines gender equality, pre-accession assistance and Europeanization. She has published articles in Rissener Einblicke (2004/5) and Arbeitspapiere und Materialien. Nr. 60: Neues Europa? Osteuropa 15 Jahre danach (2004). She also assisted with the publication Entwicklungszusammenarbeit in islamisch geprägten Ländern (2005).

Contributors xv

Stefan Samerski is Professor at the Catholic Faculty of the Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. He is an expert in the church history of East–Central Europe for the seventeenth to twentieth centuries (church–state relations, popular piety). His most important publications are Wilhelm II. und die Religion (1999); Venezia e il suo cielo dei santi nel settecento (2000); and ‘Wie im Himmel, so auf Erden’? Die Selig- und Heiligsprechungspraxis der katholischen Kirche zwischen 1740 und 1870 (2002). An Schrijvers was recently awarded her Ph.D. (dissertation topic: ‘Poland and the European Union. The Europeanization of polity, politics and policies. A political science analysis of Poland’s accession process in the European Union’) where the research was funded by the FWO-Flanders. She is currently working in the Centre for European Union Studies, Department of Political Science, Ghent University, Belgium. Her specialization is EU enlargement policy, the effects of Europeanization, and Euroscepticism in Central and Eastern Europe. She is the author of several scholarly articles on the enlargement of the European Union and Polish politics. Krista Zach, retired Professor of Central European History at LudwigMaximilian University in Munich, Germany, is currently Visiting Professor for European Studies in History at Babe¸s-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She specializes in early modern cultural history and modern political history, and is the author of Orthodoxe Kirche und rumänisches Volksbewußtsein im 15. bis 18. Jahrhundert (1977); Die bosnische Franziskanermission des 17. Jahrhunderts im südöstlichen Niederungarn. Aspekte ethnisch-konfessioneller Schichtung (1979); Konfessionelle Pluralität, Stände und Nation. Ausgewählte Abhandlungen zur südosteuropäischen Religions- und Gesellschaftsgeschichte (2004); and Raymund Netzhammer Episcop în România. Intr-o epoca a conflictelor nat¸ionale s¸i religioase (Raymund Netzhammer, Bishop in Romania. In a Time of Religious and National Conflict) (2006). She has edited and co-edited 15 books and published numerous articles.

Chronology of Events that Shaped Modern Europe Date

Western Europe

1492

Discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus

1526 1789–1815

1830 1846 1848–49

French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars; reorganization of parts of Europe ‘July Monarchy’ in France End of the July Monarchy in France; convening of the German Parliament in Frankfurt; Karl Marx publishes The Communist Manifesto

1859

1861 1863 1870–71 1878 1881

1918–20

1938

Battle of Mohács; creation of the Habsburg Empire Failure of the Martinovics Conspiracy in the Habsburg Lands Polish uprising Polish uprising ‘Spring of Nations’; Slavic Congress in Prague; Czech Revolution; Hungarian Revolution; Slovak Revolution; Revolution in Walachia and Moldavia Union of the autonomous principalities of Walachia and Moldavia under Ottoman suzerainty

Unification of Italy Polish uprising Franco-Prussian War; creation of the German Empire Congress of Berlin

1908

1913 1914–18

Central Europe

The First World War (the ‘Great War’) The Treaty of Versailles; creation of Austria

Austria annexed by Germany

Creation of Romania Proclamation of the Kingdom of Romania Creation of Bulgaria; annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina by Austria-Hungary Creation of Albania The First World War (the ‘Great War’) Creation of the Baltic states – Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania – Czecho-Slovakia, Hungary, Poland and Yugoslavia; Bolshevik Revolution in Russia Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia given to Germany at the Munich Conference; parts of Slovakia and Romania given to Hungary in the Vienna Awards

Date

Western Europe

Central Europe

1939–45

The Second World War

1948

Treaty of Brussels; Berlin Blockade (24 June to 11 May 1949)

1949

Treaty of Washington and the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Creation of the European Coal and Steel Community Greece and Turkey become members of NATO

The Second World War; Germany and the Soviet Union divide Poland; the Baltic states are incorporated in the Soviet Union; Ruthenia (Czechoslovakia) and Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina (Romania) are annexed by the Soviet Union ‘Prague coup’ and the formation of the Soviet Bloc; exclusion of Yugoslavia from the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) Creation of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON)

1951 1953

1955

1956

1957

1960

The Federal Republic of Germany becomes a member of NATO; Austrian State Treaty Suez Canal invasion by France and the UK

1968

Second destalinization in the USSR; erection of the Berlin Wall The EEC becomes the European Community Student revolts in France, Germany and the USA

1970 1973 1975 1977 1978 1980 1981

Destalinization in the USSR; Polish October; Hungarian Revolution

Signing of the Treaty of Rome that creates the European Economic Community (EEC) Creation of the European Free Trade Association

1961 1967

Revolt of workers in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in East Berlin Creation of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (WTO)

Denmark, Ireland and the UK join the EEC Helsinki Final Act

‘Prague Spring’ and the Invasion of Czechoslovakia by troops of the WTO; Student demonstrations in Poland in favour of the reform movement in Czechoslovakia Polish worker strikes bring a change of Communist leadership

Helsinki Final Act Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia

Karol Cardinal Wojtyl´a of Poland becomes Pope John Paul II Greece joins the EEC

Creation of Solidarnos´c´ Imposition of martial law in Poland (Continued)

xviii

Date

Western Europe

1982 1986

Spain joins NATO Portugal and Spain join the EEC; signing of the Single European Act

1989

1990

Unification of the GDR with the Federal Republic of Germany

1991

1992

Treaty of Maastricht creates the European Union (EU)

1993 1995 1999

Austria, Finland and Sweden join the EU Enlargement of NATO

2004

Enlargement of NATO Enlargement of the EU Cyprus and Malta join the EU

2005

Pope John Paul II dies and is succeeded by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger of Germany, who becomes Pope Benedict XVI

2006 2007

Enlargement of the EU

Central Europe

Hungarian Manifesto commemorating the 1956 Revolution A non-Communist government is elected in Poland; the Berlin Wall falls; Communist governments fall in Bulgaria, the GDR, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Romania Dissolution of the Yugoslav League of Communists Dissolution of the WTO and COMECON; independence of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; independence of Macedonia and Moldova; break-up of the Soviet Union Independence of Croatia, Slovenia and Bosnia-Herzegovina; fall of the Communist government in Albania; break-up of Czechoslovakia Creation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia

The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland are invited to become members of NATO Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia become members of NATO; the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia become members of the EU; the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia becomes SerbiaMontenegro

Independence of Montenegro Bulgaria and Romania become members of the EU

0

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DENMARK

UNITED

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GERMAN EMPIRE

ATLANTIC OCEAN

BELGIUM

Ukraine

LUXEMBOURG

FRANCE

LICHTENSTEIN

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SWITZERLAND

Battle of Mohacs BOSNIAHERZEGOVINA

PORTUGAL

Hungary ROMANIA SERBIA

ITALY

SPAIN

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xix

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SWITZERLAND

PORTUGAL

AUSTRIA

ITALY

SPAIN

HUNGARY

ROMANIA

KINGDOM OF THE SERBS, CROATS & BULGARIA SLOVENES

Black Sea

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GREECE

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AFRICA Map 2

Europe in 1919

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400 200

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Central Europe

SWEDEN

Western Europe

Estonia

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Eastern Europe

Latvia

Neutral states

DENMARK Lithuania

IRELAND UNITED

U.S.S.R.

KINGDOM NETHERLANDS ATLANTIC OCEAN

U.S.S.R.

Belarus

BELGIUM

POLAND

EAST GERMANY

WEST GERMANY CZECHO-

LUXEMBOURG LIECHTENSTEIN

Ukraine

SLOVAKIA

FRANCE

SWITZERLAND

AUSTRIA

HUNGARY

ROMANIA

Georgia Black Sea

YUGOSLAVIA PORTUGAL

ITALY

SPAIN

BULGARIA

ALBANIA

GREECE

TURKEY

Mediterranean Sea CYPRUS

AFRICA

MALTA

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Map 3

Europe in 1945

xxii

Map 4

Europe in 2004

Introduction Stanislav J. Kirschbaum

When the European Union (EU) created a monetary union with a single currency, giving birth to the euro in January 1999 – the common currency began to circulate in January 2002 – a brilliant compromise on banknotes and coins was reached that respected the history and identity of Europe and the member states. According to the European Commission: The euro banknotes . . . were inspired by the theme ‘Ages and styles of Europe.’ Each denomination received a single design common to all euro area countries. They depict the architectural styles of seven periods in Europe’s cultural history: classical for the €5, Romanesque for the €10, Gothic for the €20, Renaissance for the €50, baroque and rococo for the €100, 19th century iron and glass architecture for the €200 and modern 20th century architecture for the €500. As for the coins, they acquired a: common European side as well as a national side, combining the advantage of a unified approach while also allowing for the expression of national diversity and traditions . . . The designs, featuring different geographical representations of Europe surrounded by the twelve stars of the EU, appear on the reverse side of each euro coin. The 1, 2 and 5 cent coins illustrate Europe in the world; the 10, 20 and 50 cents feature the EU as a group of nations; and the €1 and €2 show Europe without frontiers.1 Money, the most universal of commodities in out modern world, became the vehicle through which diversity was celebrated outwardly in the political and economic unity that is in the process of being achieved in Europe. The admission of eight Central European states into the EU in May 2004 and of two more in 2007 gave rise to a series of additional challenges to the institution’s ability to find compromises that achieve diversity in unity as well as make possible the circulation of new coins when the Central European 1

2 Central European History and the European Union

states adopt the euro. The enlargement of the EU also meant that Central and Western Europe are finally coming together in what is becoming a sui generis unification project after centuries of separate development. It is important to stress that this process brings together different historical experiences and that, because of these differences, it raises the question of the meaning of Europe. As Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine writes: [Central Europe] was the theatre of a century incomparably more murderous and more devastating than was Western Europe. Half-way through it, let us not forget, the European century was marked by the double experience of Nazism and Communism, experienced in their terrifying succession. And it is there that we have an absolutely singular ‘patrimony’ that no other continent shares on this planet. What if it were there – or rather the lessons that we can learn – that we also find the pedestal on which to build today a new European identity?2 Laignel-Lavastine’s essay on three Central European thinkers, Czesl´aw Mil´osz, Jan Patocka and István Bibó, was written with a view to explaining how ‘the meaning of Europe’ was perceived by them at a time when the European unification project was nothing more than a Western European economic experiment in the non-Communist part of the continent. She now asks: ‘For a number of decades now, the question of Europe – that of its meaning and its vocation – was raised not from Paris, London, or Berlin, but among independent intellectuals in Prague, Budapest, and Warsaw. How, since 1989, have the technocratic architects of the [European] Union responded to these pressing invitations to return to the European spirit?’3 Whether it is from the pen of their intellectuals, as a result of their historical experiences, or from the demands of the accession process, the new EU members from Central Europe are bringing a specific contribution to the unification project. Do they face challenges that are different from those that the founding states experienced after signing, on 25 March 1957, the Treaty of Rome, which began the process that led to the creation of the EU? The main objective of this volume is to probe in this direction rather than engage in theory-building by raising certain issues that are specific to Central Europe in order to assess their importance in the context of the dynamics of the current EU unification process and also to see how they contribute to the meaning of Europe. It is in Central Europe’s historical experience that some answers may be found to the challenges that the meaning of Europe faces. In addition to its history, there are two developments that account for the region’s specificity and that make, as a result, the integration of the Central European states in the EU particularly complex: state creation and the Communist experiment. Statehood, as it is understood and as it developed in the western part of Europe, resulting in the creation of strong states like France, Spain and the UK,

Introduction 3

came late to Central Europe. Dynastic empires ruled the area for about a thousand years and dominated a group of nations that, until the modern era, survived and, in some cases, even progressed as the fortunes of different rulers and states altered the political map of the region. Such a historical experience resulted in three outcomes that marked Central Europe: first, an economic and political development that was different from Western Europe; second, the search for ways to catch up with Western Europe as the latter surged forward in its economic and political development; and, third, the need to ward off the territorial ambitions of powerful neighbours, whether from Western or Eastern Europe. For its part, the Communist experiment, a specific by-product of twentieth-century international politics in Central Europe, marked the region politically and economically, demanding of the elites governing in the post-Communist period a complete redirection of their state’s political culture and the reorganization of its economy. State creation and the Communist experiment thus represent a historical experience that is markedly different from that of Western European states that launched the unification project and gave it the direction it currently has. To address some of the questions pertaining to Central Europe, the EU and the meaning of Europe, the volume is organized around three themes related to the region’s historical experience and to the accession process. The first concerns Central Europe as a whole; the second the legacy of the national state in Central Europe; and the third the challenges of EU membership. Part I of this volume deals with the first theme and seeks, first of all, an answer to the question of the relations the nations of Central Europe had with Western Europe in the past, especially when their own development was subjected to a different rhythm and form. Slovakia is the case study offered by Stanislav J. Kirschbaum to show what relations even a small nation, considered by some as belonging to the East and whose political options were severely curtailed throughout its history, maintained with Western Europe. Second, given the specific historical circumstances, was there ever the possibility of a unifying project in Central Europe? Francesco Leoncini looks at the attempts to find a political solution that would have allowed the various nations to deal with the three outcomes mentioned above. Third, when Soviet domination, the last attempt by a powerful neighbour to control the area, ended in 1989, how did the states consider their future and what options did they have? Oskar Gruenwald, in his chapter on the transformation that occurred after 1989, looks at the options that the states of Central Europe faced while rebuilding civil society as the foundation for democratic governance. What is the legacy of these experiences? Do they offer a answer to the meaning of Europe or do they suggest instead that Central Europe has a regional future, to be defined within the EU? A recent article on the Visegrád Group suggests that its members recognize the need for continued regional cooperation in matters of security;4 is the past casting shadows on the EU experiment or is it merely offering certain lessons?

4 Central European History and the European Union

That there was a centrifugal process at work in Central Europe throughout its history is clear, but it was not as powerful as the centripetal forces driven by the desire of each nation to achieve self-determination. The ultimate goal was the creation of the national state, an outcome that was sanctioned, even though it was virtually impossible to put fully into effect, by the reorganization of Central Europe at the end of the First World War. In the historical process that preceded this outcome, certain nations were able to create a feudal state, to acquire what became important in the modern era as the ideology of nationalism held sway in the region and encouraged nations to fight for self-determination, namely state rights. These rights were but one of the prerequisites that allowed for the creation of Central Europe’s ‘national states’ in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Equally important were such factors as elite cohesion, an administrative infrastructure, social diversity, economic viability and, not least, an identifiable sense of nationhood. Whilst a sense of nationhood was something that was developed by the national cultural and political elites, and that was a process that was anything but even,5 there also had to be historical experiences to give substance to the nationalist ideology in the making. This had also happened in Western Europe, where the past was used to justify the creation of new political systems. For example, Napoléon Bonaparte, in order to give his rule historical legitimacy, did not adopt the fleur de lys of the French kings as his heraldic imperial symbol, used since the Capetians, but rather the bee of the Merovingians who has ruled the Franks before the Capetians. What were the symbols in Central Europe that acquired popular as well as national importance? What role did they play in the development of national consciousness, what was their fate during the Communist period, and what do they mean for an enlarged EU? In other words, as Central Europe becomes part of the EU experiment, what is the legacy of the national state in Central Europe, a state with a very short and, for some, a very troubled history? As most students of nationalism and state-building know, there are as many answers to this question as there are examples, and generalizations are always risky. Still, there are common elements. Two demand our attention: national symbols and national homogeneity. Four of the five chapters in Part II on the legacy of the national state, the second theme, look at the role of national symbols, how they were created, what meaning they acquired, and their contemporary relevance. There are two saints, Stephen of Hungary, examined by Juliane Brandt, and Václav of Bohemia, Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic, by Stefan Samerski; and two temporal rulers, the Moldavian Prince Stephen in Romania by Krista Zach, and Józef Pil´sudski as the architect of Polish independence by Mieczysl´aw B.B. Biskupski. In addition, in the process of self-determination in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, national homogeneity was a core value that had to be achieved. However, the history of the nation-building experience in the region tells us that the attainment of such homogeneity was simply not possible. A fifth chapter in

Introduction 5

Part II, by John J. Kulczycki, is a case study that analyses the reasons for the failure to create an ethnic Poland as late as the end of the Second World War. What is the importance of these national experiences, what do they tell us about the role of the national state in Central Europe, and how do they tie in with the meaning of Europe that is in the making? Each chapter seeks to answer these questions. At the time when the Western European states were working together to develop the EU, their Central European counterparts were experiencing a different political regime, which was imposed by the Soviet Union and which influenced their admissibility as well as their admission in the EU. When the Communist regimes were overthrown, the task of transforming them seemed too daunting a task at first. Nevertheless, this objective was pursed, and the first EU enlargement eastward took place in 2004 and included eight countries from Central Europe. It was an incredibly rapid process, but also a highly political and bureaucratic one that seemed to sweep in its wake a number of important historical questions that had been on the domestic agenda of the Central European states for decades. Joining the EU meant, therefore, the acceptance of new norms and values. In other words, membership in the EU produced additional challenges for the new candidates, but also for the EU. The chapters in Part III examine some of these challenges, the third theme of this volume. Again, this is a wide open field for which there are many questions and answers, and also many ways to proceed. This part simply addresses some particular issues and in so doing opens the door for further investigation and analysis. The overarching thread is the link between the past and the future. Basak Alpan’s chapter goes to the heart of the meaning of Europe and asks whether the Europeanization of the political space in the Central European countries is equivalent to the EU’s accession process or whether it entails much more cultural or deep-rooted dimensions. She introduces the concept of Euroscepticism, which is also taken up by Laure Neumayer who analyses in her chapter how political consensus in Central Europe on joining the EU during the 1990s gradually gave way to ‘Eurorealism’, i.e. the approval of the principle of European integration while criticizing the accession conditions, and how European integration was used to define the rules of political competition in the post-Communist democracies. Accession conditions were not the only issues with which the Central European states had to deal; there were also specific issues, tied to the process of EU membership. In her chapter, Ingrid Röder looks at the status of gender equality in two candidate countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and how they were Europeanized before accession. One of Central Europe’s main concerns is how much of the past has been affected by membership in the EU and what legacies still play a role. For Mojmir Krizan, Croatia offers a case study of how some of the legacies of the past had to be abandoned as the country became a candidate for the EU. He focuses on what he calls interculturality, how it is implemented, and what

6 Central European History and the European Union

still needs to be achieved. Finally, An Schrijvers, in her chapter on Poland, assesses the perception of that country, because of its history as an especially difficult, Eurosceptic and anti-federalist member. She examines the participation of the Polish representatives in the Constitutional Convention. Central Europe is not merely a geographical description to be found on a map; it is above all a cultural and historical space that is different from Western Europe, as the four maps and the chronology in this volume show, but that, ultimately, also belongs to all of Europe. Centrifugal and centripetal forces were at work throughout Central Europe’s history but, after the fall of Communism, a common goal appeared: membership in the EU. The nations and states of the region soon demonstrated that they were keen to join the EU and integrate into its political framework, and also to narrate their national past as part of a common European history. Although they started to do this separately, focusing on the desired community with the EU member states rather than with their competing neighbours, even forgetting, it would seem, their own intellectual legacy, they nevertheless acknowledged that they belong to a region of Europe whose past invites them to contribute to the meaning of Europe. As Laignel-Lavastine writes: ‘The Hungarian writer György Konrád reminded us in 1982 that Europe is above all a state of mind, or rather a state of minds whose centre of gravity is the preservation of human dignity and whose priority should reside in the implementation of a new “political morality” that transcends national frontiers.’6 This reference to each other, the development of regional cooperation, and the laying down of a stable basis for European unification is a process that is now beginning to take place and that will inevitably influence the development of the EU and, above all, the meaning of Europe. The authors of this volume hope, through the issues they examine, to bring about a better understanding of the Central European contribution to the ongoing process of EU integration and the meaning of Europe, as well as offer promising paths of investigation.

Notes 1 See www.europa.eu.int/comm/economy_finance/euro/faqs/faqs_3_en.htm 2 Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Esprits d’Europe. Autour de Czeslaw Milosz, Jan Patocka, István Bibó (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 2005), p. 20. 3 Ibdi., p. 26. 4 See Simon Araloff, ‘The Visegrad Group: Alliance Against Russia and Germany’, Axis. Global Challenges Research, 21 February 2006. www.axisglobe.com/article.asp? article⫽691. It is also worth nothing that the Visegrád countries are cooperating in a number of other areas. See for example Vý sehradské krajiny na ceste do Schengenu. Spolupráca v konzulárnej a vízovej oblasti medzi vysehardskými krajinami pre obyvatel’ov Ukrajiny a Moldavska (Bratislava: Výskumné centrum slovenskej spoloc nosti pre zahranicnú politiku, 2004).) 5 Robert Seton-Watson writes, for example, about the Hungarians in the Habsburg Empire: ‘though they had no great start, [they] very rapidly outdistanced the other

Introduction 7 races . . . [and] in the first half of the nineteenth century they produced a rich crop of poets, dramatists and other writers, who would have been an ornament to any language and threw the Slovaks, Serbs or Romanians complete into the shade’. R.W. Seton-Watson, A Histroy of Czechs and Slovaks (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1965). 6 Laignel-Lavastine, Esprits, p. 32.

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Part I Whence Central Europe?

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1 European Roots: the Case of Slovakia Stanislav J. Kirschbaum

Shortly after Slovakia became independent in 1993, a study of its domestic politics in the first two years of independence indicates that the British press, according to Adam Burgess, ‘cast [Slovakia] as a probable member of that unenviable club, “the East,” a demon which apparently throws a dark shadow over Europe proper as the continent makes its way into the next century’.1 After examining various issues that made the news in those two years, Burgess concludes: ‘It would appear then that British journalism on Slovakia has been hostage to an ideological agenda which is not the product of actual events within the country itself. The evidence does not suggest prejudice, but it would appear that events within Slovakia are interpreted through definite prisms.’2 Why was Slovakia portrayed in this way in the British press? Did Slovakia ever belong to the ‘East’? What are Slovakia’s historical roots? The purpose of this chapter is to answer these questions and also to contribute to the elimination of certain misconceptions of Slovak history that still persist in the literature.3 Geographers, historians and political scientists tell us that Europe has always been divided into a number of regions, divisions that cannot be ignored when addressing the issue of a nation’s or a state’s European roots. Where the nation is situated constitutes the first of a number of questions that must be answered before one can establish what roots it has in Europe. In geographical terms, there is no doubt that Slovakia lies in the centre of Europe, especially if we accept Europe as a geographical extension that stretches from the Atlantic to the Urals, as French President Charles de Gaulle once put it. One author places Slovakia at the crossroads of Central Europe.4 But political considerations have also put Slovakia in Eastern Europe, certainly for a little less than a half-century in modern times; Europe was divided ideologically at that time and Slovakia belonged in the Soviet sphere, a sphere not considered really European: the country and its inhabitants were cut off from the rest of Europe and the Western world. However, the period of belonging to Eastern Europe is seen as exceptional in Slovak history. To bring this point home, soon after the fall of Communism, Slovak President Michal Kovác, 11

12 Whence Central Europe?

in one of his first speeches abroad, stated that Slovakia belongs to the West because it is there that ‘its fundamental cultural and political consciousness and disposition lie’.5 With very few exceptions, Slovaks at home and abroad have always believed that they belong to Europe and that they have European roots. Nevertheless, Slovakia is given a Central European designation because of its geographical location, a designation that, however, also ends up having a political connotation. Over the centuries there was uneven political, economic and social development in Europe. According to Larry Wolff, such differences brought about geographical as well as political definitions and divisions, the designation of Eastern Europe being the most recent.6 Central Europe came to refer to what the Germans termed ‘Mitteleuropa’ in the nineteenth century or Alan Palmer ‘the lands between’7 in the twentieth, that is to say, the area between Europe’s democratic Western and its autocratic Eastern parts. The question that arose in the post-Communist era is: in which direction has each nation in ‘the lands between’ tended or been forced to direct its political, economic and cultural life and development? To answer this question for Slovakia and also in view of the fact that it is one of the post-Communist states that sought membership in the European Union (EU), there needs to be a determination of its European roots. Such a determination not only means an identification of those roots that link Slovakia to the nations and states that began the process of European unification, namely Western Europe, but also gives an indication of the possible parameters needed to define what the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, called ‘Europe: our common home’. Such roots and their importance in the nation’s history may also explain some of the policies pursued since the fall of Communism by the Slovak political elite in their attempt to have their nation become a member of Western institutions, in particular the EU. The Slovak Republic that joined the EU on 1 May 2004 is the second state in Slovakia’s modern history and was a little more than a decade old when it became a member. This brief period is important to the understanding of the process that made EU membership possible. Before 1993, when the second Slovak Republic was born, there had been a short-lived state that had existed before and during the Second World War, also called the Slovak Republic, and that was forced to disappear once hostilities were over. Previously, in 1927, a Slovak province had been created in the First Czechoslovak Republic, which became autonomous in 1938, a quasi-federal status that lasted only six months. Even though the Peace Treaties in 1919–20 speak of a CzechoSlovak Republic, with the hyphen indicating that there is an entity called Slovakia that was brought in to form the new state, Slovakia as such did not actually exist at that time, at least not constitutionally. The term Slovakia is relatively recent; it appeared for the first time in the nineteenth century in a petition to the Habsburg Emperor in 1849. Slovakia was officially referred to as Upper Hungary. In earlier centuries, from the sixteenth to the eighteenth,

European Roots: the Case of Slovakia 13

when most of Hungary was occupied by the Turks, Slovakia made up most of what historians call ‘Royal Hungary’. As this backward glance suggests, a look for Slovakia’s historical European roots offers something of a challenge. To meet it one must answer another question: what do we mean when we speak of Slovakia? For the purposes of this chapter, the Slovakia to which we are referring is simply the territory of contemporary Slovakia, a territory that has included and still includes the majority of Slovaks in Central Europe (there are Slovak communities of some importance in Hungary and Serbia and smaller ones elsewhere, but they can be legitimately excluded). The search for Slovakia’s historical European roots therefore refers to the links and contacts that the Slovaks inhabiting this territory have had with the states, societies and peoples of Western Europe from the time since they settled on the land that now defines their state. For this reason there are only two lines of investigation that enable us to determine the relations with Western Europe: the first is the extent to which the Slovaks have been influenced by or involved in the intellectual currents that were prevalent in Western Europe; and the second is an examination of the institutions in Slovakia that have contributed to social, political or intellectual change in Europe. For nations that had their own state in the past, or had ‘historical rights’ that made it possible for them to create a national state in 1918–19, the relations between their historical state and other political entities in Europe make up a third line of investigation. There are many Slovaks who consider Great Moravia, a state on the territory of contemporary Slovakia that existed in the ninth century, to be the first Slovak state and would find such a line of enquiry totally legitimate. What makes such an investigation difficult is the short length of time of its existence, a mere 75 years, and the absence of any historical involvement that made of this state a major regional actor, influencing the development of Central Europe. Nevertheless, it did make a contribution through the spreading of Christianity in the region. However, it found itself in a rather peculiar situation: Slovakia received Christianity initially from Irish missionaries but saw the faith strengthened from Byzantium, from two brothers from Thessalonica, Constantine (Cyril)8 and Methodius; on the other hand, Slovakia found itself in the Western half of Christendom as a result of the influence and pressure of the Frankish clergy that competed with Cyril and Methodius in the Christianization of the Slavs. The result of this situation is that there is a Slovak contribution to Christianity in Eastern Europe in the Slavonic liturgy and also in the Cyrillic alphabet created from Glagolitic, devised by Cyril for the needs of their missionary activity in Great Moravia.9 The destruction of Great Moravia by the Magyars at the beginning of the tenth century ended the relationship with Byzantium and ensured a more diverse link with Western Europe for the Slavs of Great Moravia, the descendants of today’s Slovaks; they had become subjects of a new state called the Kingdom of Hungary.

14 Whence Central Europe?

Religion The importance of religion, more specifically Christianity, is what defined all political as well as intellectual activity in Europe during the Middle Ages. The Slovaks were now subjects of the Hungarian Crown and did not find themselves directly involved in the resulting power struggles that took place between the Roman Catholic Church and various temporal rulers; rather they focused on their social and intellectual life, which was defined by the presence of a multiplicity of religious orders that came from Western Europe and that were involved not only in charitable activities, but also in document preservation thanks to their scriptoria where documents were copied and illustrated, and, most importantly, in education. An impressive number of abbeys and monasteries appeared whose role in the cultural and economic life of Slovakia cannot be overemphasized. They reported to the archbishopric of Ostrihom and the bishoprics of Nitra and Jager. Among the most active orders were the Benedictines, the Carthusians, the Cistercians, the Franciscans, the Paulinians and the Premonstratensians. Their influence extended to both genders and it is a female Benedictine order, the Poor Clares, that established the first urban monastery in Trnava in 1239. Education was one of the most important tasks that these orders carried out, primarily but not uniquely for the development and preservation of religious life. In his history of the Church in Slovakia, Ján Chryzostom Korec writes: ‘The third Lateran Council of 1179 ordered that in each bishopric the chapter make available near the cathedral a “magister” [master] who would teach and educate the clerics. This responsibility was later extended to bigger parish churches that had the financing for it. Monasteries were for their part always responsible for education.’10 He adds that since monasteries were not isolated from the people, they became centres of culture as well a liturgy, ‘touching all spheres of life – from the economy through the strengthening of laws to literature’.11 He also points out that ‘[w]ell organized monasteries in Slovakia were in constant contact with each other but also abroad with the cities of their establishment and [thereby] helped to create the atmosphere of European Christian universalism’.12 The presence, strength and role of the Church transcended whatever political struggles there were, including invasions such as that of the Mongols in 1240–42; whatever was destroyed was soon rebuilt. More difficult times, however, soon appeared. The inhabitants of Slovakia would not be spared involvement. The turmoil that enveloped the Catholic Church and Central Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with the Black Death, the papacy in Avignon, and the challenge from the Czech religious reformer Jan Hus, had interesting consequences in Slovakia. The Hussite armies that appeared in the 1420s and the 1440s laid waste many cities and towns, and targeted especially monasteries and churches. Most were later rebuilt. This period also saw a renewed attempt by King Mathias Corvinus to create in 1465 an

European Roots: the Case of Slovakia 15

institution of higher learning in the Hungarian kingdom, the Academia Istropolitana in Bratislava, to combat the teachings of the Hussites. Its precursor, the University of Pécs, had been founded in 1367 but had lasted only four decades. Like the one in Pécs, Academia Istropolitana lasted for a short period of time, for 25 years before being closed down. Humanism was in its early phases and non-confessional institutions, especially institutions of higher learning, were not yet welcome in Hungary. But it was a harbinger of events to come. The challenge of Hussitism, as it turned out, was not as great as that of the Reformation in the sixteenth century that split Europe into two religious camps and ushered in the modern era with the Westphalian order. The Reformation spread far and wide throughout Slovakia thanks to the German inhabitants of the mining towns who were receptive to Martin Luther’s message, and also thanks to the instability provoked by the Turkish occupation of Hungary after the battle of Mohács in 1526 and the challenge to Habsburg rule by the Hungarian nobility. Many magnates embraced the Reformation, thereby underlining its strength and presence in Slovakia. As Branislav Varsik writes: ‘In Slovakia the Lutherans – that is to say the Slovaks, the Hungarians usually being Calvinists – gave themselves a strong ecclesiastical constitution at the synod of Z ilina in 1610; their political power was such that the palatine, George Thurzo, was invited to join their ranks in 1609.’13 While condemned to be the military battleground for the Turks, the Hungarian magnates and the Habsburgs, Slovakia also became the centre of the Counter-Reformation in Central Europe. The nomination of Bishop Peter Pázma n at the head of the archbishopric of Ostrihom in 1616 and his elevation to the rank of cardinal in 1629 marked the beginning of a process that stopped the progress of the Reformation and ensured the success of the Counter-Reformation in the lands of the Habsburgs. Pázma n came from an aristocratic Calvinist Magyar family, converted to Catholicism, and joined the Society of Jesus. His contribution to the success of the CounterReformation lay in his decision to focus on the education of the children of the aristocracy and also of those who were members of other nationalities in Hungary. As Varsik writes: ‘He needed many priests, educated from the ranks of all the nations of Hungary, especially those belonging to the sphere of Western culture that had been Catholic before the Reformation: Slovaks, Croats, Magyars, and Germans.’14 Documentary evidence suggests that he was particularly sensitive to the needs of the local Slovak population in Trnava.15 As a result, Slovakia was in the middle of one side of the religious and philosophical divide that marked Renaissance Europe and whose consequences still resonate today. Concrete evidence of a Slovak contribution to Catholicism and to the intellectual currents of the epoch in Europe is found in the activities of the University of Trnava, which Pázma n founded in 1635.

16 Whence Central Europe?

The University of Trnava Higher education came late to the Kingdom of Hungary, especially when we consider the dates of the founding of neighbouring universities: Prague in 1348, Krakow in 1364, and Vienna in 1365. As we saw above, two attempts to create a university, in Pécs and in Bratislava, had been only partially successful. It would take over a century before another one was founded after the closing of the Academia Istropolitana, and it took the impetus of the Reformation to do so. The Lutherans in Slovakia sought to set up institutions of higher learning in Levoca and Hlohovec at the beginning of the seventeenth century but had to give up their plans because of financial and other difficulties. The Catholics met the challenge of higher education with the creation of the University of Trnava under the patronage of the Jesuits. And although it was a Jesuit university, it soon became a model for other universities, for example in Olomouc where one was founded in 156616 and later in Zagreb in 1669.17 It was an institution of higher learning in the full sense of the term; Ján Komorovský writes: ‘Without taking into consideration the status of the University of Trnava, it is important to note that it joined other European universities as an institution with all of the academic liberties that were in evidence since the Middle Ages and which had to be defended on more than one occasion.’18 Initially the university had only two faculties, philosophy and theology. They were certainly the most important faculties for the Counter-Reformation, yet in time the Faculty of Philosophy played a role in the intellectual ferment that characterized the Renaissance when natural science imposed itself as an independent discipline, challenging the conventional philosophical wisdom of the period. In their study of the teaching of philosophy at the University of Trnava, Theodor Münz and Marianna Oravcová note that ‘although initially philosophy was to help conserve the already outmoded philosophical thinking of the Middle Ages, it linked up on more than one occasion with modern and progressive thinking’.19 In another study, Marianna Oravcová notes how the conclusions of natural science not only began to influence Neo-Scholastic philosophy but also brought about the articulation of progressive philosophical ideas and scientific approaches at the university.20 The scholar of the period who best illustrates these developments and especially the importance of natural science is Martin Sentiváni (1633–1705), rector of the university and author of 56 books, whose most important publication, Curiosa et selectiora variarum scientiarum miscellanea (An assortment of interesting and rather select items of general and academic knowledge) published in 1689–1702, was a major work in astronomy, meteorology, botany, zoology, geography, history and geology.21 A faculty of law was founded in 1667 and Karol Rebro tells us that ‘it was the first successful and lasting attempt to ensure legal education in Hungary at that time’.22 The university also possessed a library of over 15 000 books,

European Roots: the Case of Slovakia 17

a press,23 two important archives, academic departments, a botanical garden, and ‘an observatory whose founder was the world renowned astronomer Maximilián Hell’.24 The university was reorganized in 1753 on the model of the University of Vienna. A year later, the teaching of natural sciences began, the astronomical observatory was opened, and in 1769, the university inaugurated a faculty of medicine. The teaching of languages was also an essential aspect of the curriculum that gave the university additional importance; Ján Tibenský writes: ‘If in the 70s of the eighteenth century there was, in the Faculty of Philosophy, along with teachers of German, French, and even Italian, a teacher who taught Hungarian, it was the result of the retreat in the Counter-Reformation profile of the university and a remarkable indication of the change of this “archbishop” university into a “royal,” that is to say state, university.’25 Pázman  had created the university for all the citizens of the Kingdom of Hungary as an intellectual centre of the Counter-Reformation and this is the role that it played. That was its strength but such an intellectual direction also imposed a limitation. It was a university for Catholic students where, occasionally, non-Catholics were also admitted, although, it would seem at their own risk, as Varsik reports: ‘The first rector, Dobronoky, mentions in his diary that, in 1637, two Calvinist students, most likely Magyars, were excluded from the class in logic because they refused to become Catholics.’26 As a result, non-Catholic students in Hungary, especially Slovak ones, went to study in German universities, which, according to Tibenský, ‘had longterm consequences for Slovak national and cultural development’.27 But that is another story. The university made a major contribution to the Counter-Reformation, but it also played an important role for the Slovak nation: its location in the western Slovak town of Trnava is one of the reasons why the Slovaks were the predominant group among students and professors, as the research carried out by Varsik indicates.28 It would not seem, however, that they were privileged in any way. Komorovský explains: ‘What contributed fundamentally to the universality of the University of Trnava was the fact that Latin was the language of instruction. In practical terms this meant that a member of any nation could be a university professor. Qualifications rather than national attachment were determinant.’29 The results were impressive, as František Kociš, who looked at the composition of the faculty, writes: ‘From a professional point of view, the old University of Trnava had outstanding scientists in the social and natural sciences (Sentiváni, Revický, Invancic, Jaslinský, Adami and others), all Jesuits, who were not unacquainted with modern intellectual currents.’30 One can conclude that the Slovak contribution to the university and its intellectual life was anything but minor. The university had developed into one of the major intellectual centres of Central Europe and was fully involved in the intellectual life not just of the Hungarian kingdom and Slovakia, but of all of Europe when, what can only

18 Whence Central Europe?

be termed a most unfortunate decision, and in some respects even a catastrophic one, was taken. Rebro writes: ‘Unexpectedly [Empress] Maria Theresa decided in 1777 to move the entire university to Buda with the explanation that there would be only one university for all of Hungary, in Buda, which was the centre of the country.’31 Not until the twentieth century would another university be founded in Slovakia, at first a Hungarian one, Elizabeth University, founded in 1914 but moved to Hungary in 1918, and then a Slovak one, Comenius University, founded in 1919. Both were located in Bratislava.

The modern era The moving of the University of Trnava to Buda ended the direct Slovak contribution to European intellectual life until the twentieth century. When, in May 2004, I asked Slovakia’s foremost specialist on the history of the university, Jozef Šimoncic, why the university was not renewed when CzechoSlovakia was created in 1918, he replied that it had not occurred to anyone, including Slovakia’s Catholic clergy; in addition, Prague had allowed for the creation of Comenius University, named after a Czech educator, which government circles most likely felt was more than enough for Slovakia. It is also not clear that the Czechoslovak government would have welcomed a Catholic university in Slovakia. To underline this last point, suffice it to indicate that the tercentenary celebrations of the founding of the University of Trnava in 1935 took place in Budapest, not in Trnava, and were organized by the Hungarians. Only in 1985 were there celebrations in Trnava, in this case to mark the 350th anniversary of its founding, and then only when the Slovak Communist elite found out that Budapest was marking this anniversary.32 Finally, after Communism fell, in 1992, the University of Trnava reopened in Trnava. Nevertheless, its existence was soon challenged, as we point out elsewhere.33 Today it takes its place among Slovakia’s major institutions of higher learning. After the University of Trnava moved to Hungary, the Slovaks, like other Central European nations, found themselves experiencing a different political development from that of Western Europe, the result of the Ottoman occupation of Hungary and the economic consequences of the discovery of the New World. In addition, they became the objects of a policy of Magyarization by the government in Budapest that threatened their survival; they focused inward, codified their language, developed their literature and culture, and fought to have their political rights recognized. Still, they did not remain untouched by the intellectual and political currents that swept Western Europe, for example those before and during the French Revolution, but were prevented from discussing them.34 As the nineteenth century unfolded, other nations in Central Europe were also involved in their own process of national self-determination, which helped shape modern Europe. But economic developments since the sixteenth century as well as European power politics

European Roots: the Case of Slovakia 19

had created an area called Central Europe, for which the intellectuals and politicians in the modern period, as Francesco Leoncini points out in this volume (Chapter 2), sought to find a political solution that would make their region a subject rather than an object of international politics. However, a Central European project, whether in the form of a federation or a confederation of independent states, never got off the ground. All the Central European nations pursued instead the objectives announced by US President Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points that were given international sanction in the Peace of Paris, in particular the right of national selfdetermination.35 They did so even when its application in 1918–20 proved to be selective and/or flawed. The small states of Central Europe, as a result, fell to the territorial and ideological ambitions of more powerful neighbours, first Germany, then the Soviet Union. Slovak independence in 1939, often presented as a consequence of German expansion, was not uniquely an outcome of German policies; it also came about as a result of domestic factors, which had been driven by the selective application of the principle of selfdetermination towards the Slovak nation. It is, however, the link with the German challenge to the Versailles order that determined the postwar fate of this first modern Slovak state, namely its reincorporation in Czechoslovakia in 1945, and a general ambivalence on its meaning in Slovak history.36 Slovakia’s second independence in 1993 was also the result of the process of national self-determination. Without European roots, it is unlikely that the Slovaks would have seen such an outcome. Even if, until the twentieth century, the Slovaks had been subjects of the Hungarian Crown, enjoying the privileges of belonging but not of participating in the running of the state, their status had not prevented them from being involved in and making a contribution to European civilization, as we have seen. As their struggle for survival became political in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and they faced the prospect of assimilation in both Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the inhabitants of Slovakia continued to maintain links with the rest of Europe and never lost their sense of belonging to Europe, of having European roots. To what extent did these roots influence Slovak political life in the postCommunist era? First, it is important to note that the Slovaks, like other Central European nations, had become politically active only towards the end of the eighteenth century. The national revival, the codification of a literary language, and participation in the electoral process (however limited) to which we have referred, although they followed a general pattern found elsewhere in Central Europe, became nevertheless specifically tailored to the needs of the nation in its struggle for survival. The Slovak body politic was torn between the pressure of external influences and the inevitable self-defence reflex of their political situation. In Hungary, this dichotomy can be seen in the Old School and the New School in the nineteenth century, and later in the political options articulated by those who studied abroad, especially

20 Whence Central Europe?

in Prague, called ‘Hlasits’, and those who lived in Slovakia, called the Martin Group. In interwar Czechoslovakia, this dichotomy played itself out between those who were known as the ‘Czechoslovaks’ and those called ‘Autonomists’.37 In other words, while Slovakia’s political elites were locked in political battles about the best solution for their nation, they did so with the aim of ensuring the application of the principle of self-determination, even during the Communist period, which outwardly imposed only one option: international proletarianism. The Communist era must be treated differently from other historical periods in Slovakia. Although originally an ideology that sprang from European philosophy, when it was applied first in Russia, which became the Soviet Union, and in Central and Eastern Europe in the postwar period, Marxism–Leninism espoused a model of political rule and politics that few analysts would consider European.38 In addition to its totalitarian characteristics, this ideology openly rejected any European tradition that did not fit its ideological understanding of historical development, especially the dialectical transformation of society that would lead to the triumph of the working class and socialism. The Soviet control of Central Europe lasted for almost half a century and the experience of Communist Party rule in Slovakia left traces in the political process that were evident in the first years of the second Slovak Republic, putting in jeopardy Slovakia’s attempts to join Western and European institutions. As we point out elsewhere, the traces of Communist rule cast a long shadow on the political style of those who governed in the period immediately following the fall of Communism and the birth of the second Slovak Republic.39 In addition, according to one observer, there were indications that the Slovak government, despite declaring that it was seeking to join Western institutions, was actively pursuing a pro-Russian orientation.40 Fortunately, these traces of totalitarian politics and the presumed pro-Russian orientation were done away with in 1998 when the population elected a coalition of parties that were willing to form a government that would lead Slovakia in the EU and also in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. When this happened, any doubts that Slovakia tended in any other direction but toward Europe were swept away.

Conclusion Slovakia is located geographically in Central Europe, yet it clearly has European roots. It was influenced by and participated in all the intellectual currents that swept not just Western Europe, but all of Europe, and at times even contributed to them directly, as the activities of the University of Trnava during the Counter-Reformation indicate. But Slovakia also experienced Central Europe’s historical development. It is the earlier historical legacy that underscored the population’s desire to return to Europe after 1989 and join European institutions. There was a trial period of five years immediately after independence

European Roots: the Case of Slovakia 21

when the vestiges of the postwar Communist past extended their shadow on its political life and raised doubts about Slovakia’s political orientation. The experience proved salutary and these vestiges were set aside in 1998: in a very short time, Slovakia was on the road to joining the EU, a goal it achieved in 2004. Now that Slovakia is a member of the EU, the political and diplomatic representatives of the second Slovak Republic have a duty to ensure their country’s full participation in the process of European unification; the people of Slovakia earned this right. They have also earned the right to contribute what is specifically Slovak; as we write elsewhere: ‘history, in all of its dimensions, has left an important legacy that can now be Slovakia’s contribution to the EU: the Slovak people’s intimate link with Christianity and the values that it represents. These are also European values.’41 To emphasize Christian values would make an important contribution to the main challenge that all states in the EU face in the years to come as they search out the meaning and definition of ‘Europe: our common home’.

Notes 1 Adam Burgess, ‘Writing Off Slovakia to “the East”? Examining Charges of Bias in British Press Reporting of Slovakia, 1993–1994’, Nationalities Papers 25(4) (1997), 679. 2 Ibid., p. 680. 3 See Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, ‘Slovakia: Whose History, What History?’ Canadian Slanovic Papers/Revue canadienne des slavistes XLV (3–4) (2003), 459–67. 4 Joseph M. Kirschbaum, Slovakia. Nation at the Crossroads of Europe (New York: Robert Speller & Sons, 1960). 5 President Michal Kovac, ‘Slovakia and the Partnership for Peace’, NATO Review, February 1994, p. 15. 6 Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). 7 Alan Palmer, The Lands Between: a History of East–Central Europe since the Congress of Vienna (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970). 8 When Constantine entered a monastery in Rome in 868, he took on the name of Cyril with the result that the two brothers are usually known as Cyril and Methodius. 9 Toward the end of the ninth and beginning of the tenth century, Glagolitic was modified in Bulgaria and used extensively in Byzantium, and has since become an alphabet used by the Eastern and some Southern Slavs. 10 J.Ch. Korec, Cirkev v dejinách Slovenska (Bratislava: Lúc, 1989), p. 167. 11 Ibid., p. 169. 12 Ibid., p. 193. 13 Branislav Varsik, Národnostný problém Trnavskej univerzity (Bratislava: Ucená spolecnost Šafaríkova v Bratislave, 1938), p. 235. 14 Ibid., p. 237. 15 See Jozef Šimoncic, ‘Peter Pázma n a Slováci v Trnave’, in Ústav dejín Trnavskej university, Fons tyrnaviensis I. K dejinám Trnavskej university. Konferencie, symposia, správy (Trnava: Ústav dejín Trnavskej university v Trnave, 2006), pp. 21–6. 16 Miloš Kour il, ‘Olomoucká a Trnavska univerzita jako pr iklad kooperace’, in Jozef Šimoncic, ed., Trnavská univerzita 1635–1777 (Trnava: Trnavská univerzita v Trnave, 1997), p. 55.

22 Whence Central Europe? 17 Mijo Korade, ‘Veze izmedju Zagrebackog i Tranavskog sveucilišta’, in ibid., p. 61. 18 Ján Komorovský, ‘Trnavská univerzita a idea univerzity’, in ibid., pp. 14–5. 19 Theodor Münz and Marianna Oravcová, ‘Filozofické myslenie na Trnavskej uni icaj, ed., Trnavská univerzita v slovenských dejinách (Bratislava: verzite’, in Viliam C VEDA Vydavatel’stvo Slovenskej akadémie vied, 1987), p. 108. 20 Marianna Oravcová, ‘Novoveká prírodná filozofia a jej odraz vo filozofickom myslení na Trnavskej univerzite’, in ibid., p. 161. 21 See Ján Tibenský, ‘Trnavská univerzita v slovenských dejinách’, in ibid., pp. 18–19. 22 Karol Rebro, ‘Právnická fakulta Trnavskej univerzity’, in ibid., p. 123. 23 For more on the library and the press, see Hadrián Radváni, ‘Kniznica a tlaciare n Trnavskej univerzity’, in Teologická fakulta Trnavská univerzita v Trnave, Jezuitské školstvo vcera a dnes. Zborník z medzinárodnej vedeckej konferencie 12. októbra 2006 v Trnave (Bratislava: Teologická fakulta Trnavskej univerzity v Bratislave, 2006), pp. 95–113. 24 František Kociš, ‘Vedecký a ideový odkaz Trnavskej univerzity 1635-1777’, in Šimoncic, Trnavská univerzita, p. 25. 25 Tibenský, ‘Trnavská univerzita’, p. 34. 26 Varsik, Národnostny problém, p. 239. 27 Tibenský, ‘Trnavská univerzita’, p. 18. 28 See note 13 and also Branislav Varsik, ‘Národnostný problem trnavskej univerzity’,  ic aj, Trnavská univerzita, pp. 96–107. in C 29 Komorovský, ‘Trnavská univerzita’, p. 16. 30 Koc iš, ‘Vedecký’, p. 25. 31 Rebro, ‘Právnická fakulta’, p. 134. 32 It is important to point out that when Jozef Šimoncic, who was Trnava’s archivist, first suggested to the Communist leaders in Trnava in 1985 that there be a celebration to mark the anniversary, he was almost punished for doing so. When the decision was finally made to proceed with celebrations in Trnava, it is he who was asked to organize them. 33 See Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia. The Struggle for Survival, 2nd edn. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 293–4. 34 See Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, ‘The Martinovics Conspiracy and the Slovaks’, Österreichische Osthefte 43 (1/2) (2001), 45–55. 35 For an excellent analysis of the importance of this principle at the peace conference, see Margaret Macmillan, Paris 1919. Six Months that Changed the World (New York: Random House, 2001), pp. 109–54 and 207–70. 36 See Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, ‘The First Slovak Republic (1939–1945); Some Thoughts on Its Meaning in Slovak History’, Österreichische Osthefte 41 (3/4) (1999), 405–25. 37 For more on this, see Kirschbaum, History of Slovakia. 38 This is a point strongly made by Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. 39 This is fully outlined in Kirschbaum, History of Slovakia, pp. 273–308. 40 See Ivo Samson, Die Sicherheits- und Außenpolitik der Slowakei in den ersten Jahren der Selbständigkeit. Zu den Vorausetzungen der Integration der Slowakischen Republik in die euroatlantischen Verteidigungsstrukturen (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2000). 41 Kirschbaum, History of Slovakia, p. 309.

2 Federalism in Central Europe: Past and Present Francesco Leoncini

Introduction In May 2004, ten new states joined the European Union (EU); among them were five countries that for a long time were considered to belong geographically to Central Europe: the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. What was ‘Central Europe’? Was it a viable political as well as a geographical conception, and what contribution did it try to make to the peace and stability of the European continent? These are some of the questions that this chapter seeks to answer, and in order to do so, a new interpretation is needed in the definition of Central Europe. The concept of Central Europe cannot be traced back simply to that of ‘Mitteleuropa’, which was a German concept that indicated nothing more than Germany’s will for supremacy over the surrounding regions, including the north of Italy. It was clearly defined by German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg in September 1914 and systematized in Friedrich Naumann’s writings.1 Similarly, the reference to the Habsburg variant of ‘Mitteleuropa’, which in many aspects is no more than the expression of a myth constructed ex post on the basis of successive negative experiences, is inadequate. In the nineteenth century, the Habsburg Empire did not manage to transform itself from an autocratic (Zwangsmaschine) to a multinational state (Völkerstaat) and the politics of Vienna were based, above all, on the logic of divide et impera, on the competition between different nationalities. The Habsburg Empire was in crisis; it did not understand modernity, it used repression, supported obscurantism during the Biedermaier period and, on the artistic level, was out of step with Munich, Berlin and Paris, as Jacques Le Rider points out.2 This Habsburg Mitteleuropa variant also left out a great many Polish and Romanian regions that historically gravitated towards the centre of Europe. Recently, authors such as Piotr S. Wandycz have referred to an East Central Europe defined by Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia in their current boundaries, which is also an extremely limited concept.3 The fact is that Europe, as the Yugoslav Rada Ivekovic´ states, always defined itself 23

24 Whence Central Europe?

in a binary form,4 whereas Western Europe considered itself the whole of Europe: ‘It has always self-determined its history, redefining its own frontiers towards the East and, finally towards Asia.’5 Ivekovic´ writes elsewhere: ‘It [Western Europe] produces an otherness to which all the defects it hopes to shake off can be assigned and propelled.’6 As a result, the other half of Europe did not reveal itself as a co-subject but, at best, as an absence. It could be said that everything that was beyond the ideal Berlin–Trieste–Otranto line was non-existent, it was something that, at best, Western Europe could colonize, educate and validate for itself. This dichotomous idea of the European continent was, however, unfounded.

What is Central Europe? Historically, there is a central area in Europe with specific characteristics, an area that extends from the Baltic to the Aegean Sea, located between the Latin Germanic West and the Byzantine Slavic East, whose political centre was in Muscovite Russia. There is a unity of destinies that characterizes this area within which, on a geopolitical level, there is no distinction between north and south. In addition, the Balkans were not considered as something gloomy and tribal, as a kind of quasi-Asia, in contrast to the Mitteleuropa of the Habsburg–Germanic mould, which was found in a space that was already ‘Western’ and which was nearer to the very ‘source of civilization’. This area of peoples and countries in which Greece and Serbia, Bohemia and Poland, Hungary and Romania, to name but a few, were included, lived a common experience over the centuries, which was accepted by the protagonists, and which was interpreted in the sense of achieving a new united role on the international scene. In his 1942 essay, Federation in Central Europe, Milan Hodza,7 a nowforgotten Slovak journalist and politician, wondered what the destiny of Europe, all of Europe, would have been if, at the beginning of 1938, there had been an agreement to work together among the eight countries of Central Europe, that is, the countries between Danzig and Thessalonica.8 What happened in the 1930s was that the Axis powers, Italy and Germany, acted to block every attempt at collaboration within the Danube–Balkan area. As Drahomír Jancík points out, the Third Reich played a major role in the destruction of the Little Entente.9 Therefore the problem is not one of considering the internal conflicts of this area, the struggles that took place there, and that are still present among ethnic groups, minorities, nationalities and religions (on this point, Western Europe should look at its own history before debating that of others), but rather to give greater consideration to the role the great powers played. Consider the Sudeten German problem in European politics in the period between the two wars:10 it demonstrates precisely how, apart from the differences between Czechs and Germans, strategies external to the Bohemia that did not have any consideration for the interests of these two populations were imposed on them and weighed heavily on their destinies.

Federalism in Central Europe: Past and Present 25

Czechs and Germans were the objects and not the subjects of international politics. This assessment could be repeated for other ethnic conflicts, particularly in the post-Communist period, namely in the disintegration of Yugoslavia, the war in Bosnia and the Kosovo problem. It follows that the first element of identification of Central Europe is its status as an area of competition between the great powers. Over the centuries it was a ‘frontier’ of clashes and conquest by the Byzantine Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, the Republic of Venice, the Mongols, the Ottoman Empire, Sweden, Russia, which took Sweden’s place as the great power of the North, and the Papal States. It is an area of peoples that have been mostly exploited and used for purposes and aims extraneous to their interests, or else they have been left on their own during difficult moments of their history. In addition, Central Europe was also a place of continuous attempts at aggregation among the various populations who live there. Central Europe became strong when this complex of regions or at least a great many of them had a common government and when centripetal forces prevailed over centrifugal ones. Examples abound: Great Moravia under Svätopluk, the territorial expansion of the Czech Pr emysl dynasty from Koenigsberg to Aquileia, the Polish–Lithuanian Union of the Jagellonian dynasty and the attempts at unity by the Hungarian kings Louis of Anjou and Matthias Corvinus. There is a character of dependence and subordination that is shared by the countries of the area, but at the same time there is continuous and firm action aiming at the integration of the different components. The Habsburgs were successful for a long period primarily because they were closely linked to a great Western power, the Papal States. They became the very instrument of the Counter-Reformation in Central Europe and, as a dynasty, they were an expression of the West and, in particular, of the Holy Roman Empire. Without doubt, they managed to create an atmosphere of collaboration among the various components of their Empire. According to Victor-Lucien Tapié, the result was that ‘Germans, Slavs, and Magyars, destined to come into conflict a few decades later in struggles that became harsher until the war of 1914, began to reciprocate their enthusiasm for the elaboration of a national idea.’11

A new approach Georg Friedrich Hegel, Johann Gottfried Herder, and other representatives of German Romanticism were the first to see the need for a link between national existence and linguistic expression; it aroused immediately interest among the Slavs in their linguistic traditions and their history. Among the intellectual elites of various Slavic peoples there was (and may still be) a national self-consciousness that was greater than a nationalism defined as supremacy towards the exterior, as hegemony. This nationalism existed among the Magyars and the Germans, but not among the Slavs of the Dual Monarchy. Nationalism was an imported product in Central Europe that came from Germany, France

26 Whence Central Europe?

and Italy; it did not arise from within, and it frequently assumed the character of self-defence, not of domination. In this respect, Pan-Slavism in Central Europe was never a political movement, nor could it have prevented the increasing differentiation that emerged in the course of the centuries between the different components of the Slavic race. The Slovak Ján Kollár saw it as a search for common roots, for cultural reciprocity (vzájemnost’), in order to unleash the synergies capable of performing the task assigned to the Slavs, that of redeeming humanity. This he meant in moral terms and did not exclude a project of union of the Slavic nations. But when Germany unified in the second half of the nineteenth century, it became a dynamic power. We have become used to Eric Hobsbawm’s conception of the ‘short century’,12 but if we try to widen the dimension of the twentieth century a little more and go to the roots of the ‘short century’, we find that German unification was the breaking point of the order established at the Congress of Vienna. It was the trigger for all successive developments. With unification, Germany became a great state in the centre of Europe and constituted a pole of attraction and destabilization. That brought about a succession of blows and conditions, above all towards Austria–Hungary which, excluded politically from the Central European area, was pushed ever more towards the Balkans until it clashed with the Serbs. There are also other aspects that should be specifically reconsidered, in particular, the ever-increasing dependence of the Habsburg Empire on Germany. The stages of this dependence are well known: Vienna’s occupation of Bosnia–Herzegovina and the Sandjak of Novi Pazar to block a link between Serbia and Montenegro, and then the annexation of Bosnia in 1908. The guiding line was Berlin–Baghdad. As a result, the Dual Monarchy went in the opposite direction to what had been foretold some time before by the Moravian František Palacký, one of the inventors of Austro-Slavism and father of the Czech national revival, who wished to live in a state that recognized a specific role for the Slavic populations and redefined itself in consideration of them. ‘If I take a look beyond the boundaries of Bohemia,’ Palacký wrote in 1848 to the Assembly of Frankfurt, refusing its invitation to attend, ‘historical and natural considerations urge me not to look towards Frankfurt, but towards Vienna and to look there for that centre that will have the task and the mission of protecting my nation, guaranteeing peace, freedom, and justice.’13 Palacký did not speak only for his people but expressed an idea that accompanied all the successive developments of the national problem in the Dual Monarchy. He proposed a democratic and federal redefinition of the Habsburg state and found an immediate demonstration in the Parliament of Kromer íz (Kremsier) in 1849. The final project of the new Austrian Constitution, on which the parliamentary committee had managed to find an agreement just before its dissolution, constituted a realistic compromise between the various points of view and gave the Habsburg dynasty a precious instrument to block nationalistic aspirations and to accept the autonomy

Federalism in Central Europe: Past and Present 27

requests of the different national components. Particularly interesting was the discussion that developed around the different way the Czech and the German side interpreted federalism. The final project, which offered a compromise between two opposite tendencies, left on one hand the provinces in their historical boundaries as ‘parts of the indivisible hereditary constitutional Monarchy’, while on the other, it allowed for the creation of districts on a national basis with further autonomy in the organization of schools, language teaching, and justice. The twenty-first paragraph contained, therefore, the first formulation of the right of nationalities: all the peoples (Volksstämme) of the Monarchy were considered equal, the inviolable right to conserve and develop their nationality was assured, and equal rights for all languages in regional use (landesüblich) in schools, offices and in public life were guaranteed. That project was proposed almost in its entirety again in 1906 by the Romanian Aurel Popovici, when he published his volume Die vereinigten Staaten von Gross-Österreich.14 In December 1911, in a memorandum to Prince Franz Ferdinand, Hodza and the Romanian Iuliu Maniu underlined the necessity of transforming the Monarchy into a big economically and politically integrated area, overcoming thereby the old dualistic structure; they indicated that this solution was the only one that could maintain the Habsburg Empire as a great power. These two gentlemen were members of the ‘Belvedere Circle’. Their activities show a need to rethink the clichés that have found their place in contemporary historiography, like the one where nationalism is given as the reason for the end of Austria–Hungary or, successively, the conviction that the Treaties of Paris and the creation of the new states of Central Europe constituted the direct and irreversible cause of the Second World War. Accordingly, it would seem that due to their economic backwardness, their composite ethnic structure, and above all the inclusion of substantial German minorities, in contrast with the principle of self-determination, their creation could do nothing more than bring about great international tension, which justified the German reaction that resulted in a new European conflict. What happened instead was that the Peace of Paris offered the new populations, who thereby received the recognition of their statehood, the unique chance to create a new order, internally and within the geopolitical boundaries of which they were now part, that had connotations with the tolerance and respect for democratic values for which they had declared war against Austria–Hungary. However, the Western powers, namely France and Great Britain, did not help this process; rather with the Dawes and Young plans they favoured German economic recovery to the detriment of the new states of Central Europe in the 1920s and sought an agreement with Hitler at all costs with a view to arriving at a general settlement with the Axis powers in the 1930s. As a result, these Central European states disappeared not because of their intrinsic weakness, but because of the willingness of the Western democracies to allow German territorial expansion. What was clearly manifest at Munich in 1938 later led to the attacks on Poland in 1939 and on Yugoslavia in 1941.

28 Whence Central Europe?

A new solution? The geo-historical area from the Baltic to the Aegean Sea distinguishes itself also for being a place of autonomous cultural elaboration. However, there is not only nationalism, which, among other things, is an imported product (from Romanticism and the Napoleonic Wars) and a reaction to external dangers, especially the unification of Germany in 1871. More than nationalism, we can speak of national self-defence. The intelligentsia of these regions was the author of original cultural and political movements in a democratic-liberal and democratic-socialist sense, such as is found in federalist thinking. To the names of Hodza, Popovici and Maniu can be added those of the Czech Tomáš G. Masaryk, the Hungarians Oszkár Jászi and Mihályi Károlyi, the Romanians Nicolae Titulescu and Grigore Gafencu, the Bulgarian Aleksandar Stambolijski, and among South Slavs, Josip Strossmayer, Frano Supilo, and the considerable Slovenian federalist movement, which some prefer to ignore. Strossmayer was the most authentic supporter of that Yugoslav movement, which in recent times has been considered historically unfounded and linked to the activities of Josip Broz Tito. On the contrary, this movement towards the unification of the South Slavs had deep roots in the nineteenth century. In 1866, in Zagreb, Strossmayer founded the Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academia Scientiarum et Artium Slavorum Meridionalium) and considered his action as a step in the direction of the Yugoslav federalist idea, as part of a wider dialogue between the Catholic and the Orthodox Churches. It is because of this that he opposed the First Vatican Council on its definition of the infallibility of the pope. At the same time, he supported the need to recognize a Croatian–Illyrian unit in the Habsburg Empire and therefore he took part, together with the Slovene Jernej Kopitar and Palacký, in the Austro-Slavic movement. To look at the life and work of these people is to overturn interpretations of a deterministic type, which, in the renewed national self-consciousness of the peoples of Central Europe, are seen as the main cause of most European tragedies. In fact, a large group of politicians and intellectuals moved in exactly the opposite direction, first to safeguard the monarchy and then, after its demise, to propose the resurrection of the more pertinent characteristic of the Habsburg Empire, that is, a framework that guaranteed the coexistence of the different national groups. Nor were the masses unfavourably inclined to these attempts when we consider that the Royal Imperial Army numbered 60 per cent Slav troops and only 13 per cent Austro-Germans, while at officer level the latter represented 76 per cent. On the Italian front, there were Bosnians, Croats and Slovenians who made things very hard indeed for the monarchy. Perhaps it would be worth remembering Joseph Roth’s book Die Kapuzinergruft. The various peoples were closely attached to the Crown in a way that the Austrian and Hungarian ruling classes were not. The latter in particular were absolutely chafing under the Habsburg bonds; one only

Federalism in Central Europe: Past and Present 29

has to read Sandor Petöfi’s poem ‘Austria’ to get a sense of Hungarian feeling. Instead, the Imperial house profoundly disappointed the Slavic and Romanian peoples by opting for the Austro-Hungarian Compromise (Ausgleich) rather than lending a hand in the creation of a federal state. The end of the monarchy could, in fact, be dated back to 1867 rather than 1918. With the outbreak of war in 1914, Masaryk realized that the moment had come to break definitively with Palacký’s Austro-Slavism and act for a new future for his people and the other Slavic peoples cut off from the destiny of the Habsburgs. His idea was to overcome every national particularism and to see to it that the independence of the Czech nation and the union between Czechs and Slovaks constituted the introduction of a wider Central European integration process. His struggle was not one for independence as an end in itself, but a struggle to ensure that this independence was only the first step towards rebuilding a wide united area on a federal basis. The principle of nationality was thus linked with the federative principle. In this sense, the creation of multinational states such as Czecho-Slovakia, the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, and Poland should not be seen as ‘imperfect’ entities in comparison to the ‘perfect’ application of the right to self-determination, but rather as the first step toward an unavoidable politics of collaboration between the peoples of Central Europe with a view to achieving a greater association of nations. In the words of Masaryk: ‘Between nationality and internationality there is no antagonism, but on the contrary, agreement’. He also added: Nations are the natural organs of humanity. Humanity is not supernational, it is the organization of individual nations. If, therefore, individual nations struggle for their independence and attempt to break up states of which they have heretofore been parts, that is not a fight against internationality and humanity, but a fight against aggressors, who misuse states for the purposes of leveling them and enforcing political uniformity. Humanity does not tend to uniformity, but to unity; it will be the liberation of nations which make possible the organic association, the federation of nations, of Europe, and of all mankind.15 Since 1989, we have seen that a ‘perfect’ application of the right to selfdetermination means national independence, that is to say, the subdivision and the fragmentation of Central Europe, which brings every state into a new position of subordination internationally. The creation of small, more ethnically homogeneous states has not, however, brought a strengthening of the single nationality on the European political scene, still less in the world, but has rendered each one more marginal. There is a parallel with Africa after 1960, which had on one hand a multitude of flags and a succession of formally independent republics, but on the other an almost total economic, military and cultural dependence on the great powers; in the case

30 Whence Central Europe?

of present Central Europe, this dependence is on Germany and on the USA. What is more, some of these small states, such as Bosnia–Herzegovina, Macedonia, the Baltic States, and Serbia and Montenegro are themselves multinational, and therefore the right of self-determination should be further applied; if this were to happen, it would render the area completely ungovernable. The 1942 volume, Federation in Central Europe, is important on this point. Hodza proposed to revive the message of Masaryk, leaving behind the experience of the interwar period; rather he went back to the history of Central Europe from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the outbreak of the Second World War. He highlighted in particular the role played by his country in developing democracy and cooperation in the Danube–Balkan area and proposed a project for a confederation of Central Europe, outlining in detail also the constitutional bodies: a strong federal executive, based on the model of the USA, freed from parliamentary tricks that could paralyse it, a federation which constituted ‘the defence of the national and social security of its own peoples’, and which contributed to widening the process of integration on the continent. But above all, he placed emphasis on the necessity of regional agreements as essential conditions for every federation on a large scale. This meant that the countries of Central Europe needed to find common political bonds. Rather than jostling among themselves to ensure the best place at the service of dominant powers, they were above all to coordinate their efforts to assume a unified position on problems of common interests so as to be on equal terms with the big centres of political and economic power at international level.

Conclusion It is important to recognize how often external factors and forces have heavily influenced most conflicts in Central Europe; there was a manipulation of nationalism, which took place by playing on the divisions and cracks that existed among the various populations of the area. There is a comparison to be made between the Sudeten German problem in the 1930s and the Kosovo problem in the 1990s: when we consider the international context of which they became a part, we get a better understanding of their dynamics and the results achieved. The hypertrophic character of most analyses of nationalism as a product of the domestic history of various peoples cannot go unnoticed. As the American political commentator of Lithuanian origin, Arista Maria Cirtautas, states: ‘the force of nationalism in backward societies is not only the result of their general backwardness, but is also the consequence of the system of international relationships set up by the first liberal nations’.16 However, in the final analysis, it is the competition between West and East over the centuries that constantly and stubbornly prevented every project that aimed at creating a federation in Central Europe.

Federalism in Central Europe: Past and Present 31

As the EU moves forward politically and expands geographically, its leaders may consider what happened to an area that was once called Central Europe and how the leaders of its constituent nations and states sought to balance the larger project with the needs of its members. Such a target is one of the most important challenges that the EU faces in the years to come.

Notes 1 Friedrich Naumann, Mitteleuropa (Berlin: Reimer, 1915). 2 Jacques Le Rider, Modernité viennoise et crises de l’identité (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000). 3 Piotr S. Wandycz, The Price of Freedom: A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present (New York: Routledge, 1992). 4 See also the interesting study by Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). 5 Rada Ivekovic´, La balcanizzazione della ragione (Rome: Manifestolibri, 1995), p. 75. 6 Rada Ivekovic´, Autopsia dei Balcani (Milan: R. Cortina, 1999), p. 80. 7 Hodza was a Slovak, of the Protestant faith, and a follower of Masaryk in the group ‘Hlas’ (The Voice) that tried to start a collaboration between the Czechs and the Slovaks in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He was Czechoslovak prime minister from 1935 to 1938 and worked bravely to defend and reinforce the Little Entente in the face of the disruptive pressures that came from the governments of Rome and Berlin, but the international conditions at that time brought about the failure of his efforts and the end of Czechoslovakia. 8 Milan Hodza, Federation in Central Europe. Reflections and Reminiscences (London: Jarrolds, 1942). The passage is taken from the German edition, Schicksal Donauram. Erinnerungen (Vienna–Munich–Berlin: Amalthea, 1995), p. 254. Slovak edition: Federácia v Strednej Európe a iné štúdie (Bratislava: Kalligram, 1997).  íše a rozklad Malé Dohody. Hospodár ství a diplomacie v 9 Drahomír Jancík, Tretí R Podunají v letech 1936–1939 (Prague: Univerzita Karlova, 1999). 10 Francesco Leoncini, La questione dei Sudeti 1918–1938 (Padua: Liviana, 1976). Reprint by Libreria Editrice Cafoscarina, Venice, 2005. German edition: Die Sudentenfrage in der europäischen Politik. Von den Anfängen bis 1938 (Essen: Hobbing, 1988). 11 Victor-Lucien Tapié, Monarchie et peuples du Danube (Paris: Fayard, 1969), p. 289. 12 Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes. The Short Twentieth Century 1914–1991 (London: Michael Joseph, 1994).  eský Liberalismus. Texty a osobnosti (Prague: Torst, 1995), p. 38. 13 See C 14 Aurel C. Popovici, Stat ¸si Natiune. Statele-Unite ale Austriei-Mari (Bucharest: Albatros, 1997). 15 Tomas G. Masaryk, The New Europe. The Slav Standpoint (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1972), pp. 79–80. The first critical edition was published recently in Italian, translated and annotated by Francesco Leoncini, La Nuova Europa. Il punto di vista slavo (Pordenone–Padua: Edizioni Studio Tesi, 1997). 16 Arista Maria Cirtautas, ‘Il nazionalismo e i neofiti della democrazia’, in Federigo Argentieri, ed., Post comunismo terra incognita (Rome: Edizioni Associate, 1994), pp. 33–4.

3 Toward an Open Society: Reflections on the 1989 Revolution in Eastern Europe1 Oskar Gruenwald

The enigma of 1989 From the Adriatic to the Baltic, from the Elbe to the Urals and beyond, totalitarianism collapsed. Yet the 1989 bloodless revolution in Eastern Europe caught most observers by surprise, eclipsed only by the subsequent dissolution of the Soviet Empire. This chapter explores the signal sociocultural forces that contributed to the sea-change. There are three major reasons for recalling the contributions of major dissident individuals and movements for transcending Communism toward a free society: (1) the memory of the central role of intellectuals/dissidents in the peaceful revolution which toppled Communist rule in Eastern Europe and Russia is rapidly fading, while the job of transcending Communist dictatorships remains unfinished;2 (2) in a sense, it was easier to critique totalitarian rule than to forge new institutions, and revive or develop civic culture and civil society;3 and (3) to rekindle the ideals, hopes and aspirations expressed by the language of universal human rights, which served as a common platform for opposing totalitarian rule, and which became often obscured in the post-Communist era by national/ ethnic conflict invoking racial/ethnic identities and group rights.4 In fact, throughout the region, national/ethnic strife threatens to derail the project of an open society. The economic and social hardships of transition are fuelling discontent, which, if continued, may bring back the erstwhile Communist rule under new guises of nationalism and socialism; witness the growing electoral successes of Communist parties in East Central Europe.5 To discern the future, we need to recall the lessons of the past, especially since the prophets of post-Communism aspired to an open society and basic human rights and liberties regardless of ethnicity, class or gender. Throughout Eastern Europe, grass-roots movements emerged in the 1970s and 1980s demanding greater participation in social, economic, cultural and political life, more autonomy in both the private and public spheres, democratization of the workplace and genuine representation in all societal structures and institutions, an end to censorship, unrestricted access to information, 32

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 33

greater authenticity and ethical conduct on the part of rulers and the ruled, decentralization of decision making, spiritual renewal and national rebirth, personal liberty, a decent standard of living, constitutional guarantees of basic freedoms and human rights, the rule of law, and an end to the party’s ideological and political monopoly. In brief, the rise of a new civic culture and civil society preceded and fostered the momentous changes in Eastern Europe. This chapter offers a model of transition from authoritarian systems to political democracy, highlighted by ‘The Menshevik Divide’, and places the East European nations and the USSR on a cognitive map which indicates the relative strength of civic values and autonomous action just before the revolution (1988).6 This model also discloses why the transition remains incomplete, since authoritarian values and political processes keep many post-Communist systems in a twilight zone between democracy and dictatorship. Hence the quest for universal human rights, democracy, pluralism, tolerance and an open society is still an incomplete project in much of Eastern Europe and the Soviet successor states. At the dawn of the Third Millennium, it is appropriate to recall the price of democracy in terms of the social, psychological and moral cost of the transition to post-Communism in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. While such states as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary may draw on a considerable historical tradition of the rule of law, constitutionalism and democratic ideals, the post-Communist transition elsewhere in Eastern Europe and Russia/CIS is more problematic given the lack of a developed democratic ethos. In all post-Communist states, the drama of the new democratic aspirations versus authoritarian mindsets and bureaucratic institutions is being played out against a backdrop of precipitous technological, economic, social and political change on the world scene.7

The rise of civil society in Eastern Europe The thesis of this chapter is that the emergence of civil society in Eastern Europe during the 1970s and 1980s was contingent on the growth of autonomous action, conjoined with liberal values of a new civic culture, which directly challenged the party monopoly of power and ideology (Figure 3.1 and Table 3.1). Non-institutionalized action in Eastern Europe evoked diverse institutionalized responses, which varied in space and time, and were basically arbitrary. The official response to autonomous action ranged from cooptation to criticism, threats, blackmail, fines, censorship, harassment, loss of job and housing, discrimination against children’s higher education, relatives and friends, detention, interrogation, prosecution, forced confessions and informing on others, beatings, assaults, rape, torture, confinement to prison/camp, psychiatric ward or house arrest, banishment, expulsion, denial of travel abroad or emigration, forgeries, staged accidents and suicides, and so forth. This pervasive atmosphere of fear, secrecy, intimidation and uncertainty was rooted

34 Whence Central Europe? Civic culture

100

Model of transition, 1988

Liberal

90 80 P

70

L1 L2 E

Civic values

60

C

50

H

Y

G

40

U

30

R

20

B

10

A

Authoritarian

Civil society

Autonomous action

0 0

10

20

Totalitarianism: one-party monopoly of power and ideology

30

40

50

60

‘The Menshevik Divide’: twilight zone of democracy and dictatorship

70

80

90

100

Political democracy

A: Albania; B: Bulgaria; C: Czechoslovakia; E: Estonia; G: East Germany; H: Hungary; L1: Latvia; L2: Lithuania; P: Poland; R: Romania; Y: Yugoslavia; U: USSR.

Figure 3.1

Model of transition, 1988

Note: Figure 3.1 is a heuristic tool or a conceptual map, which attemps to locate East European states relative to each other along two major axes: civic culture (low to high) and civil society (low to high), rather than absolute percentages. It is also arguable whether ‘The Menshevik Divide’ occurs at the 50 per cent or some other level. The single most important benchmark characterizing ‘The Menshevik Divide’ is the possibility of organizing more than one political party, or, conversely, the absence of a one-party monopoly of power and ideology.

in the phenomenon that any autonomous action in Eastern Europe could elicit any and all types of official response, but without being strictly predictable. Table 3.2 indicates only the most common action–response patterns, which again varied in space and time, marked by indeterminacy, that is, unpredictability. A note of caution is in order: the human rights abuses and struggles cited in this chapter are indicative, not exhaustive, but a fair assessment is that by Robert Conquest, perhaps the pre-eminent historian of twentieth-century

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 35 Table 3.1

Civic values in Eastern Europe, 1988

Liberal

Authoritarian

Freedom Autonomy Independence Individual responsibility Professionalism Merit pay Pluralism of values and interests Innovation Initiative Civic courage Entrepreneurship Participation Religious faith Respect for human dignity Patriotism Tolerance Education Social mobility Human rights Private ownership Democracy Compromise Negotiation Openness Nonconformism

Submissiveness Bureaucracy Dependence Collectivism Nepotism, ‘connections’ Uravnilovka Dogmatism Conservatism ‘Passing the buck’ Fear Black market/corruption Apathy Atheism Nihilism National chauvinism Ethnicity/racism, anti-Semitism Indoctrination Egalitarianism ‘Class struggle’ State ownership/central planning ‘Democratic centralism’ Inflexibility Confrontation (Self-)censorship Conformism

Communist totalitarianism, in his Reflections on a Ravaged Century, supplemented by The Black Book of Communism, by Stéphane Courtois and colleagues.8 Nevertheless, any analysis of human rights abuses in Communist one-party states remains necessarily incomplete due to at least three systemic factors: (1) after half a century, totalitarianism in Václav Havel’s9 sense became internalized in East European polities, especially among the older generation and the privileged strata – party, state and economic bureaucracies, police, army and regime intellectuals; (2) many victims of human rights abuses remained silent for fear of the consequences – retaliation by the authorities against themselves, family, relatives and friends; and (3) many instances of human rights violations never reached Western media, and remain unknown to the Western public. Thus we do not even know the precise number of political prisoners in Communist systems. Just like their postCommunist counterparts before 1989, the existing Communist regimes in the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba not only refuse to admit the existence of political prisoners, but mix them with common criminals. Communist legal malpractice has long been known to

36 Whence Central Europe? Table 3.2

Autonomous action in Eastern Europe, 1988

Autonomous action

Institutional response

Emigration, escape

Emigration, expulsion, prison, ransom, harassment, death Harassment Harassment, confiscation, fine, prison Harassment, loss of job, prison Suppression Cooptation, suppression Harassment, loss of job, prison Harassment, fine Cooptation, suppression, expulsion Psychiatric wards, prison Suppression Harassment, prison/camp, terror Harassment, fine, prison Suppression, prison, expulsion, psychiatric wards Limited tolerance, fine, prison Emigration, expulsion, prison, denationalization Harassment, expulsion Harassment Cooptation, silencing, emigration, expulsion, prison Suppression Harassment, confiscation, prison Suppression Emigration, expulsion, banishment Prison/camp, psych. ward, disappearance, accident/suicide

Open letters, petitions Samizdat Labour strikes Independent trade unions Independent student organizations ‘Flying universities’ ‘Living room theatre’ Autonomous peace groups Conscientious objectors Unauthorized demonstrations Underground churches Autonomous music groups The Democratic movement The second economy Nationalist dissent Ecological movement Feminism Neo-Marxism Helsinki watch groups Imported émigré literature Clandestine radio broadcasts Internationally known dissidents Unknown dissidents

indict the ‘politically incorrect’ on fictitious charges of economic crime, drug smuggling, traffic violations, and the like, or commit them to psychiatric wards as mentally disturbed, or use them as cheap labour in China’s Gulag Archipelago.10 Table 3.3 attempts some preliminary estimates of the number of political prisoners in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union on the eve of the 1989 revolution. In a sense, the rise of civil society in Eastern Europe since the 1960s was a codename for dissent. A brief survey of the major types of autonomous action in Eastern Europe reflects basic civic values as defined by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba in their study, The Civic Culture Revisited.11 Not unexpectedly, on the eve of the 1989 revolution, Albania and Bulgaria scored lowest, whereas Central Europe enjoyed the highest scores, apart from the Baltic Republics and the former Yugoslavia, which are bracketed due to space limitations.12 In addition, the four Central European nations selected here for

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 37 Table 3.3

Political prisoners in Eastern Europe, 198813

Country

Poland Hungary Baltic Republics Bulgaria Albania Romania Czechoslovakia East Germany Yugoslavia USSR

Total

300 400 500 1 000 2 500 3 000 5 000 7 000 8 000 20 000

Prisons/camps

200 300 450 800 2 500 2 800 4 700 6 800 7 800 19 500

Psychiatric wards

Conscientious objectors

100 100 50 200 Unknown 200 300 200 200 500

100 300 50 50 Unknown Unknown 100 200 50 200

comparative analysis – the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Poland – share a common Central European history and cultural heritage, and thus are conducive to comparative study. East Germany Much of Western scholarship on East German dissent focused on neo-Marxist intellectuals such as Rudolf Bahro, Robert Havemann and Wolfgang Harich, as well as the peace movement.14 Along with the ‘Praxis’ group in Yugoslavia and the ‘Budapest School’ in Hungary, these East German utopian socialist thinkers offered one of the most scathing critiques of bureaucracy and inequality in their respective societies. Thinkers such as Bahro held up a theoretical mirror of unfulfilled promises to the official socialist realities in Eastern Europe.15 Ironically, the self-proclaimed Marxist regimes found it necessary to silence their independent Marxist critics, banishing them from universities, and in the case of Hungary and East Germany, expelling them abroad. In the 1970s, however, a new group of opposition writers emerged in East Germany, including Lutz Rathenow, Bettina Wegner, Frank-Wolf Matties and Jürgen Fuchs (both in the Federal Republic of Germany). In 1980, Rathenow became the first East German writer to be imprisoned for publishing a book abroad.16 In 1984, Rolf Schälicke, a physicist from Dresden, was sentenced to seven years for lending to friends such ‘objectionable’ books as Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.17 Western observers typically concluded that dissent, and hence civil society, were weak in East Germany. But this observation runs counter to two major facts: the strength of the unofficial peace and human rights movements in the 1980s, and the unabated Sturm und Drang of massive emigration and expulsions from the GDR.18 Throughout the Communist world, travel abroad, whether licit or illicit, only reinforced the ‘demonstration effect’ of rising expectations, since closed societies pretending to be more advanced than their capitalist adversaries could not begin to

38 Whence Central Europe?

compare with the reality of West European and American cornucopias, something that even Soviet First Secretary Nikita S. Khrushchev admitted during his US visit, which was to include Disneyland – that America with its bountiful harvests and supermarkets was ideal for Communism.19 The East German peace movement was unquestionably the most vocal, if not the largest, in Eastern Europe. Its phenomenal growth in the 1980s coincided with the introduction of new civil defence manuals and military education in the school curricula. This was all the more surprising, since East Germany was the only East European state which instituted in 1964 the Baueinheiten (construction units which built airfields and other military facilities) as an alternative for those who objected to military service. Periodically, large numbers of peace activists were expelled or emigrated from the GDR, as in 1983 and 1988. Their symbol, ‘Swords into Ploughshares’, was ripped from their clothing by police arresting demonstrators. In mid-1980s, Helsinki Watch estimated the unofficial peace movement in the GDR to be 10 000 strong.20 By 22 November 1984, the Independent Defenders of Peace in the GDR and Czechoslovakia issued a joint statement, protesting the stationing of Soviet missiles in their countries and NATO missiles in the West: ‘No missiles in Europe, from the Urals to the Atlantic’.21 The independent East German peace movement often held its meetings in churches as the only sanctuaries for free speech. However, on 24 November 1987, secret service officials raided the office and library of the Zion Evangelical Church in East Berlin, and arrested two members of a peace and ecological group. They confiscated printing equipment and samizdat publications, including the magazine, Grenzfall, which monitored human rights in the GDR. Some 400 peace, environmental and human rights activists thereupon held a protest vigil against the first raid on church premises since the 1950s. While the two men were released on 29 November, police detained activists elsewhere in the country for questioning and forbade them to travel to Berlin. Paradoxically, the raid coincided with the call for a relaxation of state censorship and greater openness in culture and literature voiced at the Tenth Congress of the East German Writers’ Association. On 10 December 1987, seven members of the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights were detained overnight by the state security police, which prevented their demonstration to commemorate the 39th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights in front of the official Committee for Human Rights building. Following a crackdown on dissent on 17 January 1988, some 120 peace and human rights activists were detained, while 50 were subsequently expelled to West Germany. In March 1988, the security police arrested another 80 human rights activists and would-be emigrants in East Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig, Weimar, Jena and Halle, apparently to deter the growing number of exit visa applications. Yet the regime’s strongarm tactics proved counterproductive, since on 14 March 1988 the Protestant Church announced its first public expression of solidarity with the would-be

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 39

emigrants. In a phenomenon reminiscent of Poland, and later Czechoslovakia, a crowd of 300 marched through the centre of Leipzig, following church services, where prayers were offered for two men arrested after filing exit visa applications. The marchers were dispersed by the police. Despite some 400 000 Soviet troops stationed in East Germany, the Berlin Wall, a secularized society and stringent repression, where dissidents sought to emigrate, were shot at the border, or were expelled to West Germany, the quest for civil society was gathering momentum in the GDR, bolstered by the common aspirations of human rights activists elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Thus, in an unprecedented protest of 4 February 1988 against reprisals in East Germany, signed by ‘democratically minded citizens of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia’, the initiators protested the long prison terms for Barbel Bohley, Ralf Hirsch, Werner Fischer, and Lotte and Wolfgang Templin (whose children were 3 and 13 years old), members of the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights. The list of signers read like a Who’s Who in the human rights movement in Eastern Europe.22 Czechoslovakia Following the Soviet-led invasion of 1968, Western observers of Czechoslovakia could only agree with a native’s characterization of the atmosphere in his country as ‘a vast political cemetery’.23 Yet both Charles Gati and Jiri Pehe pointed out the great potential for fundamental changes in Czechoslovakia, with its rich Central European cultural heritage, industrial base and prewar democratic experience.24 Despite the Soviet invasion in 1968, which extinguished the ‘Prague Spring’ and led to a ruthless ‘normalization’ in all spheres, there was the emergence in the 1970s and the 1980s of a parallel culture, which throughout Eastern Europe was a harbinger of growing ‘unofficial’ manifestations, autonomy and a civil society. The most popular unofficial cultural movement in post-1968 Czechoslovakia was the Jazz Section of the Union of Musicians, founded in 1971, and banned in 1985. The Jazz Section promoted not only music, but sponsored also forums on controversial topics, published a Jazz Bulletin on art, culture and theatre, and supplied books and magazines on philosophy, art and music not officially sanctioned, as well as records and films. It was even recognized by UNESCO as a cultural group in 1980, joined the International Jazz Federation, while its membership expanded dramatically in the late 1970s and early 1980s to some 7000, with a readership of its publication estimated at 100 000. Alarmed, the regime first pressured the Union of Musicians to restrict the Jazz Section’s activities. When the Union resisted, the Interior Ministry banned the entire Union. The Jazz Section appealed the ban in the courts, and continued its activities, which led to the arrest of the Section’s leadership in September 1986. Five of the seven defendants were released, while Karel Srp and Vladimir Kouril were sentenced on 10 March 1987 to 16- and 10-month terms, respectively, for ‘unauthorized business enterprise’.25 Srp

40 Whence Central Europe?

was released in January 1988, and immediately petitioned Miloš Jakeš, who succeeded Gustáv Husák in December 1987 as the new Communist Party boss, for legal recognition of the Jazz Section based on the Czechoslovak Constitution and the human rights provisions of the Helsinki Final Act.26 In terms of civic culture and a civil society, the most important democratic movement in postwar Central Europe was Charter 77.27 From its inception, with the famous Declaration of 1 January 1977, Charter 77 was conceived as a true civic initiative, and became later a ‘school of civic education’ and a rallying point for human rights activists throughout Eastern Europe and beyond. According to Jiri Ruml, a former spokesman for Charter 77, the Charter was originally meant as a bridge for constructive dialogue with the state, rather than an organized political opposition.28 Charter 77 came into existence to monitor the Czechoslovak government’s compliance with the human rights provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Final Act. The subsequent story of the original 243 Charter signatories, plus another 1000 later adherents, is one of Orwellian repression in a Kafkaesque state, which spawned in 1978 the establishment of the Committee for the Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted (Výbor na obranu nespravedlive stíhaných – VONS). Ruml further notes that the authorities did not prosecute the Charter itself in court (as opposed to its individual members), due to international solidarity behind this civic movement.29 The significance of Charter 77 for Eastern Europe can hardly be overestimated. Within Czechoslovakia, Charter 77 rekindled an intellectual, cultural and spiritual ferment, which initially found its outlet in the Jazz Section and popular music (some 250 ‘illegal’ rock and punk bands), and one of the strongest independent publishing activities in Eastern Europe, rivalling that of Poland. Between 1975 and 1985, an estimated 600–800 books appeared in Czech samizdat, represented by the Petlice (‘Padlock’) Press and others, and such samizdat journals as the Critical Review and the Economic Review. An apolitical, independent ‘theatre on the fringe’ or ‘living-room theatre’ also flourished in Czechoslovakia, along with unofficial East–West seminars for philosophy. In the 1980s, environmental and peace groups appeared, together with a group called the Democratic Initiative. In November 1987, more than 1000 people signed a letter protesting cultural repression and calling for the release of Srp, the Jazz Section chairman. On 28 November 1987, the playwright Václav Havel, a Charter 77 signatory, sent an Open Letter to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe meeting in Vienna, deploring the ‘war against our national culture’ by the Czechoslovak police which, since 1968, had confiscated thousands of manuscripts, journals, books, newspapers, typewriters, audio- and video-tapes and recorders, to protect the country from ‘manifestations of hostile thinking’.30 In October 1986, 24 Czechoslovaks joined 54 Hungarians, 28 Poles, and 16 East Germans in a four-country appeal commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution.31 Perhaps the single most important legacy of

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 41

Charter 77 for the dissident movement in Eastern Europe was its linkage of world peace with the observance of human rights and civil liberties in every country. On 23 November 1987, police interrupted a meeting in the Prague home of Libuše Šilhanova, a Charter 77 spokeswoman, and detained a dozen Charter 77 activists, allegedly for planning a protest for United Nations Human Rights Day (10 December) to demand the release of an estimated 5000 political prisoners. In Czechoslovakia, as elsewhere throughout Eastern Europe, peace, ecology and human rights activists found common ground with nationalist and religious dissenters, expressed in a common language – the language of human rights. Thus Miklós Duray, the indefatigable representative of the Hungarian minority in Czechoslovakia, rearrested in 1984 for organizing a petition signed by 10 000 Hungarians in Slovakia concerning a new Education Bill, and released in 1985, was a Charter 77 signatory. Equally farreaching was the Charter’s influence on the official and underground churches in Czechoslovakia. Cardinal František Tomášek’s 31-point petition for religious freedom, circulated in Slovakia in January 1988, called for a separation of church and state, an end to religious persecution, and the establishment of basic political rights. The petition gathered some 300 000 signatures by both believers and non-believers, including Protestants and Jews. The widespread support for the petition was all the more significant in light of the historic divisions between the Catholic Slovaks and Hungarians, and the more secular Czechs, apart from the East European regimes’ willingness to exploit national and antiSemitic sentiments (witness the official policies toward minorities in Albania, Bulgaria and Romania; and the anti-Semitic overtones of the official press in the region and the USSR). Support for the petition lent hope that the nationalist and religious revival in Czechoslovakia would be filled with new content: civic-mindedness, tolerance and respect for basic human rights. This, in itself, was unprecedented in Eastern Europe, where historical traditions tended in the opposite direction: separatism, intolerance and authoritarianism.32 That the East European regimes considered such a moral and spiritual renaissance an even greater threat to their rule than individual dissidents or groups is attested to by their ruthless repression of religious activists and priests by threats, harassment, imprisonment, commitment to psychiatric institutions, and even murder. Keston College, cited by Helsinki Watch, believed that the underground church in Czechoslovakia spread widely in the 1980s, with some 500 priests ordained clandestinely, despite detentions and imprisonment of 100 priests.33 In 1986, an estimated 100 000 Catholics gathered at the shrine of Our Lady in Levoca, in north-eastern Slovakia, while 40 000 Greek Church members went on a pilgrimage to Lutina, on the feast of the Assumption.34 Alienated by the spiritual vacuum left by the official Marxist– Leninist ideology throughout Eastern Europe and the USSR, the youth yearned to rediscover their personal and national self-identity and religious roots. As

42 Whence Central Europe?

in Poland and Romania, outspoken priests in Czechoslovakia, popular with the youth, were threatened, beaten, abducted, interrogated and sometimes killed. Thus Štefan Polák, a Catholic priest from Borovice, near Trnava, was murdered on the night of 8–9 October 1987.35 Apart from small Evangelical religious communities, it was the Catholic Church throughout Eastern Europe and the USSR – especially in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Croatia and Slovenia – that stood most firmly against state encroachment. Open Doors, a Christian missionary organization headquartered in the Netherlands, reported that in 1988 the Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia was left with only three bishops.36 The Czech government opposed the appointment of priests and bishops supported by the Vatican, since they rejected cooperation with the regime, unlike the Orthodox hierarchy in Bulgaria, Romania and the USSR. Cardinal Tomášek, the 88-year-old leader of the Catholic Church in Czechoslovakia, denounced pro-regime Catholic groups such as Pacem in Terris, and publicly repeated the Charter 77 principle that ‘peace and human rights are inextricably linked’.37 The emerging linkage between human rights, national and religious dissent triggered new repressive measures. In March 1988, police used 48-hour detention orders to hold some 20 religious activists and Charter 77 members in Prague. These included Havel, Charter 77 spokesman Stanislav Devátý, and such leading Catholics as Václav Benda, Václav Malý, and Augustin Navrátil. All were prevented from attending the St Vitus Cathedral special services on 6 March 1988 in honour of Blessed Agnes of Bohemia (thirteenth-century princess who was to be canonized by Pope John Paul II in 1988), conducted by Cardinal Tomášek. After the mass, attended by at least 8000, some 1000 protesters chanted slogans demanding religious freedom. The largest demonstration in postwar Czechoslovakia took place on 25 March 1988, calling for the appointment of new bishops and the restoration of religious freedom in Bratislava. Police used water cannon, batons, teargas and dogs to break up the demonstration, and arrested about 190 people, including some Western reporters and a television crew. One might add that Czech and Slovak dissent dovetailed during the 1980s, differing in tactics and emphases, as Stanislav Kirschbaum points out in his comprehensive study, A History of Slovakia.38 While Czech dissent coalesced around Charter 77, Slovaks opted for passive resistance and refuge in their Catholic faith. Mass pilgrimages and devotions baffled and irritated the Communist authorities who tried, unsuccessfully, to rewrite Slovak national history. And like their Polish neighbours and co-religionists elated at the election of the first Polish pope, Slovak faithful were equally inspired by the elevation of Bishop Jozef Tomko as the first Slovak cardinal in 1985. The Third Revolution – the rebellion of the human spirit – had clearly arrived in Eastern Europe, while observers, East and West, who looked for information and analysis mostly to official, party-controlled sources, were caught off guard, totally surprised by the events that followed.39

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 43

Hungary With the exception of Poland, the Communist experiment to create a new socialist man failed, perhaps most dismally, in Hungary. Throughout Eastern Europe, the phenomena of apathy, privatism and ‘economism’ (read: materialism), noted by Archie Brown and Jack Gray, characterized everyday life.40 The process of ‘normalization’ under János Kádár, following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, marked by the execution of some 2000 rebels, including Imre Nagy, and the imprisonment of more than 20 000, plus mass emigration, resulted in the most quiescent of Warsaw Pact nations.41 The ‘new social contract’ in post-1956 Hungary, struck between the regime and the people, assured a limited personal and economic space in exchange for tacit acceptance of party rule. The Kádár regime proved uniquely adept at coopting or undermining all dissent by censorship and self-censorship to such an extent that Western observers coined the term ‘para-opposition’ for Hungarian dissent.42 Yet, as a Central European nation, Hungary boasted a long historical linkage to the West European cultural heritage, which by the 1970s and 1980s facilitated a rebirth of civic culture and a civil society. As early as 1974, the regime detained individual dissenters such as Iván Szelényi and George Konrád. The ‘Budapest School’ of neo-Marxist theorists, critical of bureaucracy and inequalities in ‘real existing socialism’, became an embarrassment to Hungarian authorities who applied the ‘East German solution’ to their home-grown critics: leading members of the School – such as Ferenc Fehér, Agnés Heller and György Márkus – were exiled.43 The dissident movement in Hungary surfaced in 1977, with an Open Letter of support for Charter 77. The main focus of individual and group dissent in Hungary since the 1970s was to enlarge the sphere of individual autonomy from the state. Five major forms of dissent emerged in Hungary: (1) samizdat; (2) a ‘flying university’; (3) Foundation for the Support of the Poor (Szegényeket Támogató Alap – SZETA); (4) national– ecological–conscientious objection–human rights protests; and (5) the quest for independent student and academic unions. Three samizdat publishing houses were founded in Hungary: AB, ABC and Hungarian October. Hungarian samizdat journals such as Beszélö (Speaker), Egtájak Közöt (Between Points of the Compass), Magyar Zsido (Hungarian Jew) and others, all challenged the widespread acceptance of censorship and self-censorship in Hungarian society. By 1981, a ‘samizdat boutique’ operated openly in the apartment of László Rajk, a Budapest architect, but was forced to close by 1983 due to police raids, harassment, and the confiscation of materials. On 1 September 1983, the authorities issued a new decree which raised fines to 10 000 forints for printing and distributing unauthorized literature.44 Harassment, intimidation, and fines against samizdat editors, writers and publishers intensified after 1983. Thus Gábor Demszky, founder of Independent Publisher (AB), was harassed to the extent that in May 1984 some 200 people – intellectuals, students, professionals, and

44 Whence Central Europe?

workers – signed a petition protesting the illegal police assault on Demszky and calling for the prosecution of his assailants.45 Unexpectedly, Hungarian intellectuals grew more defiant during the 1980s. Ferenc Köszegi, an editor of Beszélö, refused to pay a 6000-forint fine imposed in June 1987 for the possession of a duplicating machine, and faced a 20-day prison term. Sociologist András Nagy also refused to pay a 10 000-forint fine for possession of unofficial publications, including Beszélö, while facing 40 days of imprisonment.46 In addition to fines, increasing police harassment and raids on samizdat publishers, the Hungarian Politburo ordered in June 1986 a weekly blacklist of authors who published abroad or in samizdat. Thus István Csurka, a leading Hungarian writer, who had published essays in the USA, had visited the West, and allowed Radio Free Europe to broadcast one of his lectures, was charged with disloyalty, and his works were banned in 1986.47 The church hierarchy in Hungary, under the leadership of László Cardinal Lékai (who died on 30 June 1986), attempted for a decade to reach a compromise with the state. As elsewhere in Eastern Europe, dissident priests in Hungary, especially those such as György Bulanyi who supported conscientious objection to military service, were persecuted. Bulanyi and eight other priests were removed from their parishes. In 1984, police also confiscated 119 volumes of theological writings by fundamentalist Catholic groups known as basic communities.48 Since 1984, there was also a mass exodus of ethnic Hungarians, along with some Romanians and Germans, from Romania. Both the Hungarian government and some churches set up relief programmes, including 160 Red Cross posts which supplied food, clothing, health care, housing, financial aid, and assistance in job-seeking. In addition, the active Reformed Rákosszentmihály Church of Budapest supplied a New Testament, and many refugees met and prayed every week to thank God for His protection.49 Like Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, Hungary also had its ‘open university’, dubbed the ‘Flying Kindergarten’ (Repülö ovoda). Since 1978, the Flying Kindergarten had sponsored lectures on such topics as the structure of Soviet societies, philosophy of religion, and twentieth-century Hungarian history. The open university phenomenon in Eastern Europe reflected the intellectual dimension of dissent, and testified to the traditional role of the East European intelligentsia as both preservers and creators of national culture. Hence it was not coincidental that leading dissidents in Hungary were intellectuals (many of them Jewish). While alienation among youth was widespread in Hungary, there were signs of independent thought and autonomous action among high school and college students.50 Thus, when Ferenc Kulin, editor-in-chief of Changing World (Mozgo Világ), was fired on 1 October 1983, the entire editorial board resigned as well, and protests spread to the Young Writers’ Circle, the ‘democratic opposition’ (a group of independent intellectuals), and included a petition from students at several Hungarian universities. Given the tradition of Hungarian debating societies which reaches back to at least the 1800s, it was not surprising that by 1988 Hungarian students and

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 45

academics organized their own unions, independent of official structures. The 37 founders of Fidesz, the new Democratic Youth Union, stressed their constitutional right of free association in setting up their organization. Most founders were students at Budapest universities and community colleges.51 A new Democratic Union of Academic Workers was also organized in Hungary by hundreds of university professors and research scientists who lacked independent representation.52 An example of debating societies in Hungary was the Embankment Club, banned for more than a year. In early 1988, some 100 intellectuals gathered for a club meeting in the common room of a Budapest college dormitory where samizdat books and journals were displayed and sold, and environmental activists argued against dam construction on the Danube.53 A clear sign of the loss of legitimacy among East European regimes and loss of faith among party rank and file in the promises of socialism was the vacillation of the authorities between co-opting and suppressing autonomous action. The Hungarian regime turned down an application by 150 journalists and 50 academics to set up a ‘Glasnost Club’ to improve public communication. In March 1987, a highly critical report about the Hungarian media by 22 senior journalists and broadcasters pointed out that people had been unaware until recently of the severe economic problems facing the country due to the illusion of unity maintained by the party-controlled media.54 Such candour was unthinkable only a generation earlier. Yet Károly Gross, the new Hungarian party boss who succeeded Kádár in May 1988, and who gave his first foreign interview to an American television network, remained a Communist ‘true believer’.55 Nevertheless, the new party platform called for economic and political reforms, for decentralization in the party, more democratic voting procedures and limits on tenure, coupled with a new austerity programme cutting subsidies to inefficient state-run enterprises, raising prices, and rescheduling the nation’s $18 billion foreign debt – the highest per capita in Eastern Europe. Hungarian dissidents remained unconvinced of party-sponsored liberalization. The dissident writer Miklós Haraszti told Peter Jennings of ABC-TV that meaningful economic reform was impossible without political reform. Hungary’s ‘democratic opposition’ (which included Gáspár Miklós Tamás,56 a Hungarian dissident of Romanian origin; László Rajk, son of the former foreign minister and namesake executed in 1949; Tamás Bauer, a reform economist; and János Toth, an environmentalist) tested the Hungarian electoral reforms (Law II, passed in December 1983) in the elections of 8 June 1985. Those elections featured multiple candidacies for 352 of the 387 seats in parliament and local councils. Each candidate had to sign a pledge to uphold the party programme. Of the ‘democratic opposition’ candidates, only Rajk obtained the necessary one-third of the votes at the first meeting. However, at the decisive second meeting, party people packed the hall, and Rajk’s followers were barred. Glasnost and perestroika in Hungary still had a long way to go.

46 Whence Central Europe?

Dissent in Hungary diversified in the 1980s into ecological, peace and human rights issues, cultural activities such as unorthodox art exhibits and rockand-punk music bands, conscientious objection, and concern for the fate of Hungarian minorities in Romania and Slovakia. The regime tried to co-opt and control or suppress all autonomous action. The Danube Circle, which collected 10 000 signatures by 1986 protesting the planned construction of a joint Hungarian–Czechoslovak hydraulic power dam on the Danube (the Bõs–Gabcikovo–Nagymáros dam), was forced to disband. The same fate awaited the Peace Group for Dialogue, founded in 1982 by university students and recent graduates, and disbanded in 1983, due to official pressure. Outspoken human rights activists were constantly reminded by the authorities concerning the limits of permissible dissent. In 1985, Gáspár Nagy was forced to resign from the Union of Writers on account of a poem that angered officialdom (it mentioned the execution of Imre Nagy). In 1984, an unorthodox art exhibit, ‘Hungary Can Be Yours’, held at the Young Artists’ Club in Budapest, was closed by the authorities after three days. Tamás Molnár, one of the group’s founders, was dismissed from his job, while much of the work was confiscated. During 1984, members of the Hungarian punk music band, ‘Coitus Rock Group’, were sentenced for up to two years for lyrics (nihilism and anarchism), as were members of the ‘Public Enemy’ punk band, for singing anti-Communist songs. Members of a popular ‘Mosoly’ punk band received six-month sentences for calling for the extermination of the Gypsies. Helsinki Watch reported that in the 1980s at least 100 people a year chose a prison term as conscientious objectors rather than serve in the army.57 Official Hungarian sources admitted in April 1988 that 158 people were imprisoned for refusal to serve in the army on religious grounds (146 Jehovah’s Witnesses, 6 Roman Catholics, 1 Nazarene, 1 Adventist, and 4 non-affiliated). As elsewhere in Eastern Europe, the Hungarian dissident movement grew increasingly unified by the common language of human rights. Its international linkage found expression in the 19 October 1986 Manifesto commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, which proclaimed the tradition and experience of that Revolution as ‘our common heritage and inspiration’. Signed by 122 dissidents in four East Central European nations, and endorsed by three Romanians, this remarkable document proclaimed: We declare our joint determination to struggle for political democracy in our countries, pluralism based on the principles of self-government, peaceful reunification of divided Europe and its democratic integration as well as the rights of all minorities.58 On 15 March 1988, the 140th anniversary of the 1848 rebellion against Austrian rule led by the poet Sándor Petöfi, police detained leading dissidents such as Demszky, Haraszti, Ottilia Solt, Tamás Molnár, György Gado,

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 47

Robert Pálinkás, Sándor Rácz and Jenö Nagy. Despite police measures to isolate leading dissidents, the largest unofficial demonstration since 1956 took place in Budapest, with some 10 000 marchers calling for free elections, freedom of the press and assembly, and a new constitution. All these confirmed George Konrád’s assessment that the ‘1956 Demands’ re-emerged in Hungary: demands for national sovereignty, neutrality, parliamentary democracy, mixed economy, civil rights and private ownership.59 At last, Hungary found its soul and voiced the long-pent-up cry for freedom, reflecting the growth of a new civic culture and a civil society. Poland Of all the East European Communist systems, Poland’s experienced the most spectacular rebirth of civic culture and civil society. In August 1980, this process culminated in the founding of Solidarity, the first officially recognized independent trade union organization in the Communist world.60 Equally, nowhere else in the Communist world was the split between the totalitarian regime and a nascent civil society more sharply drawn than in Poland. Worker protests in Poland in 1956, 1970 and 1976 were much narrower in their demands than the phenomenon of Solidarity (Solidarnos´c´). The resurgence of civic culture in Poland intensified after the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, paralleling developments elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Thus the Workers’ Defence Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotników – KOR) was founded in 1976, followed by the Committee for Social Resistance (Komitet Oporu Spolecznego – KOS) and the Movement for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights (Ruch Obrony Praw Czl´owieka i Obywatela – ROPCiO) in 1977. David Mason observed that the Solidarity era, 1980–82, differed from previous periods of public protests, since public opinion and public opinion surveys played a novel and important role.61 That, in itself, was unprecedented in Communist systems characterized by party-state dominance over a society of atomized individuals. General Wojciech Jaruzelski’s proclamation of martial law and the banning of Solidarity in December 1981 defined once more the limits of democratization and liberalization in one-party Communist dictatorships. In retrospect, the significance of Solidarity lay more in the broader ‘selforganization’ of Polish society, which it inspired, than in its narrower trade union concerns. From the outset, Solidarity demanded an end to censorship as well as the right to strike and to establish independent labour unions. In the process, Polish society was radically transformed. Although driven underground, Solidarity became even more effective as a symbol for the cultural rebirth of the Polish nation. The Catholic Church and Solidarity forged mutual links, and in turn became the mouthpiece for a resurgent civil society. Poland, even after December 1981, displayed the most diversified underground samizdat activity in Eastern Europe, with hundreds of books and some 30 independent journals. It featured an underground Radio Solidarity, and underground printing presses and publishing houses. As early as June

48 Whence Central Europe?

1982, the underground ‘Fighting Solidarity’ was established, whose founder, Kornel Morawiecki, a former lecturer at Wroclaw Polytechnic, arrested in December 1981, was a fugitive, successfully eluding the authorities for six years – a feat unequalled elsewhere in the Communist world. He was rearrested in November 1987 and expelled from Poland in May 1988. The underground Polish Helsinki Committee was founded by Zbigniew Romaszewski in 1979, but dissolved in 1982, following the arrest of its founders. By 1983, other Poles formed a new Helsinki Committee. In November 1984, Citizens’ Committees Against Violence were formed in Warsaw, Crakow, Szczecin and Wrocl´aw to investigate and publicize lawless police actions, following the kidnapping and murder of Father Jerzy Popieluszko. Independent theatre – in churches, private apartments and open air – flourished in Poland from 1981. The Confederation for Independent Poland (Konfederacja Polski Niepodleglej – KPN), led by the historian Leszek Moczulski, openly demanding free elections in Poland ‘promised at Yalta’, claimed 60 000 members by 1981. Ecological, peace, conscientious objection, anti-nuclear and human rights movements also spread in Poland in the 1980s. The first anti-nuclear demonstration in Poland was organized on 2 May 1986 by the Freedom and Peace (Wolnosc i Pokoj – WiP) movement in Wroclaw.62 WiP also organized an international seminar in a Warsaw church on 8 May 1987, entitled ‘International Peace and the Helsinki Final Act’, attended by Polish and Western peace activists despite regime harassment. This broad and heterogeneous movement opposed the military oath of allegiance to the USSR, was concerned with ecological issues, and committed to non-violence and alternative military service.63 The Catholic Church in Poland emerged as an even stronger national moral institution which the Communist regime failed to suppress. Hugh SetonWatson noted the importance of the concept of a European cultural community to East Europeans, and the fact that Christianity was the key to European culture.64 Unlike the people of Bulgaria, East Germany, Hungary or Estonia, the Polish people never lost their faith or their identification of the Polish national, spiritual and cultural heritage with the Catholic Church. Remarkably, the Catholic Church in the 1980s came to be perceived by all Poles, including secular left-wing intellectuals, traditionally critical of clericalism, as the preserver of Polish national identity, autonomy, and the prospects for genuine democracy in the face of Sovietization and Communism imported from the East. The election in 1978 of Bishop Karol Wojtyl´a as the first Polish pope predictably had a galvanizing effect among the Poles.65 The regime in Poland continued to wage a civil war against society. If anything, the regime–society confrontation intensified in the period after 22 July 1983 when martial law was lifted, followed by the much-heralded amnesty of 21 July 1984. Following the ban on Solidarity in December 1981, thousands of activists were imprisoned, while others went into hiding. The Western reaction of curtailing economic aid and credits to Poland, whose resumption

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 49

was made contingent on the improvement of the human rights situation in the country, apparently moved the Jaruzelski regime to declare several amnesties and to shift to more sophisticated methods of repression. Thus Solidarity, human rights, peace and ecology activists, and underground publishers continued to be harassed, beaten, intimidated, fined, detained, interrogated, denied passports to travel abroad or expelled, but only rarely imprisoned and then for short terms. Helsinki Watch reported that while martial law was lifted in Poland in 1983, the ‘state of war’ became incorporated into new legislation.66 The purpose of the new legislation was to co-opt, control or suppress all autonomous action and independent society in Poland. As early as 1982, the Association of Polish Journalists and the Association of Writers were banned. In 1983, the Union of Visual Artists and the Writers’ Union were banned, while the leadership of the Polish PEN Club was replaced by regime people. In 1984, a new law extended censorship and established a Press Council controlled by the prime minister. In 1985, the 1982 Law on Higher Education was changed, abolishing academic autonomy. In April 1985, Bronislaw Geremek, a historian and adviser to Lech Wal´esa and Solidarity, was fired from his job at the Polish Academy of Science. The regime began issuing blacklists of proscribed authors and taboo subjects (police salaries among them). On 14 June 1985, Solidarity activists Wladylaw Frasyniuk, Bogdan Lis and Adam Michnik were sentenced to three and a half, two and a half, and three years of imprisonment, respectively, for meeting ‘illegally’. By 19 June 1985, the secret police arrested Tadeusz Jedynak, member of the underground National Commission of Solidarity and a fugitive since 1983. Outspoken priests and activists became targets of secret police abduction, beating and murder. In the period May 1983–March 1984, the Polish Helsinki Committee documented 28 deaths of former Solidarity leaders and activists caused by the police or due to unexplained circumstances. New laws were passed, which required all college graduates to perform ‘socially useful labour’ for one year after graduation. The result of the Jaruzelski process of ‘normalization’ in the 1980s was a stalemate between the regime and society. In this process, the Communist regime in Poland lost the last shred of political legitimacy, resulting in an inability to govern or implement meaningful social or economic reforms. In brief, the ‘new social(ist) contract’ between the regime and the people came apart in Poland. The regime survived by naked power alone, backed by the long shadow of possible direct Soviet intervention. In the period 1981–83, some 6000 dissident Polish activists and their families (mostly from Solidarity) left the country. By 1988, some 328 000 Poles, including 10 000 students, 3500 doctors, 11 000 engineers, 4000 scientists and 36 000 technicians, emigrated, constituting a significant ‘brain drain’. Worker and student demonstrations and strikes continued in Poland, as well as underground samizdat and Solidarity. Such activities were hampered by widespread apathy and feelings of demoralization and helplessness, more than by regime suppression.

50 Whence Central Europe?

An example of sophisticated regime tactics in controlling and suppressing autonomous action and independent organizations was that of the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna – PPS), resuscitated in November 1987 (it had existed before the Second World War, but was absorbed by the Communist Party in 1948), and defunct by February 1988. PPS meetings were obstructed and infiltrated by police agents. In this brief interval, PPS activists handed out flyers to workers and were detained. On 1 February 1988, they organized a demonstration in front of the Romanian embassy in Warsaw, proclaiming ‘Solidarity with the workers of Brasov’. Police detained some 50 people, including Zbigniew Bujak, Jan Jozef Lipski, Zbigniew Janas, Jozef Pinior, Marek Wolf and Adam Slowik, all veteran opposition activists. Similar demonstrations took place in Prague and Budapest in response to the Charter 77 call for observance of a day of solidarity with the Romanian people. The most promising development in terms of democratic prospects in Eastern Europe was the growing internationalization of dissent in the region. Polish–Czech contacts were established in 1978, and grew especially among labour, ecology, peace and human rights activists. By 1987, a Polish– Czechoslovak Solidarity (PCS) came into being. Founded by dozens of prominent activists from both countries, the PCS organized a large demonstration in Wroclaw on 16 April 1987 to mark the birthday of Petr Pospichal, a Czechoslovak human rights activist imprisoned for distributing Solidarity literature in his country. Significant in terms of regional linkage of dissenters throughout Eastern Europe were such benchmark documents as the 1986 Memorandum commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution and the 1988 Protest against reprisals in East Germany, signed by hundreds of human rights activists from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia, as well as by five members of the unofficial Press Club Glasnost in the Soviet Union. There emerged a new open-mindedness among Polish intellectuals, bolstered by the promise of Mikhail Gorbachev’s new policy of glasnost, to engage their Soviet counterparts in constructive dialogue among equals. Thus, in early 1988, a group of Polish intellectuals, including Bujak, Jacek Kuron, Michnik, Andrzej Wajda, Wal´esa and several priests, directed an Open Letter addressed to liberal Soviet intelligentsia, proposing a public dialogue between the two nations. Specifically, the dialogue would seek to expose the crimes of Stalin and Beria, which resulted in the murder of some 4000 Polish officers at Katyn in 1940. The Soviet Union had long imputed this crime to the Nazis. The Letter stated: The truth must be told out loud . . . this is a necessary condition for a radical change in relations between our nations. We desire relations based on friendship: of free people with free people, of equals with equals. We desire relations purged of all servility, lies and threats of force.67

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 51

Democracy or virtual Communism? As this brief survey suggests, the rise of civil society in the former Soviet bloc since the 1960s was synonymous with dissent. Second, the rise of civil society in Eastern Europe was predicated on the strengthening, broadening and deepening of genuine public opinion, liberal civic values and a civic culture independent of the state. The growth of civic culture reflected, as well as nourished, the quest for personal and national identity, values, individual freedom, the rule of law, social mobility and a better standard of living, and basic human rights. Hence the rebirth of civic culture in Eastern Europe led necessarily to the question of the proper institutional framework which could ensure genuine pluralism and offer legal and constitutional guarantees for the exercise of basic freedoms and human rights. The emergence of civil society and civic culture in Eastern Europe during the 1970s and 1980s thus raised the question of the moral, legal, social, economic and political prerequisites of a pluralistic democracy.68 The demise of the ‘new social(ist) contract’ or implicit understanding between the rulers and the ruled in Eastern Europe was symptomatic of a triple crisis: socioeconomic, institutional and personal. The socioeconomic crisis was clear even to party rank and file confronted with stagnating living standards, shortages, corruption, misallocation of resources, hidden unemployment and inflation, underemployment, bureaucratic inefficiency, pollution, technological backwardness and growing foreign indebtedness. By the mid-1980s, Eastern Europe’s collective foreign indebtedness exceeded $100 billion. While the East German economy was subsidized by West Germany (including an estimated $500 million in ransom for political prisoners), Hungary’s relative economic success (‘goulash Communism’) derived in great part from a mounting foreign debt. Dissenters in Eastern Europe could only conclude that no meaningful economic reforms were possible in their societies without far-reaching political reforms. Economists such as László Lengyel in Hungary, who openly voiced their criticism of the futile attempt to cross the centralized shortage economies with elements of the market economy, were expelled from the party. Yet throughout the region, the party rank and file were themselves becoming demoralized given the obvious failures of ‘real existing socialism’, whose promises were always in the future, while the people were left ‘waiting for Godot’. Jacques Rupnik admitted that left-wing intellectuals in Eastern Europe were embarrassed by the rediscovery of the free market as a constituent element of civil society.69 Thus there was a growing realization among East European intellectuals, including some party rank and file, of the vital linkage between economic and political freedom. The second crisis in Eastern Europe concerned the loss of political legitimacy on the part of the ruling elites which failed to deliver the (economic) goods. Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) were belated party attempts to restructure their failed centrally planned

52 Whence Central Europe?

economies, to motivate producers, and to re-establish a modicum of legitimacy among the population, along with a better flow of information and long-promised goods and services. At first, the East European Communist leaderships adopted a cautious ‘wait-and-see’ attitude toward Gorbachev’s ‘democratization’ policies, while dissidents doubted all reforms from above.70 At best, Gorbachev’s new policies were expected to retrace Yugoslavia’s steps towards totalitarian democracy based on workers’ self-management under party tutelage and market socialism under state control.71 Indeed, Gorbachev’s public relations campaign for a better Soviet image at home and abroad bore fruit in the Western readiness for arms reduction and economic aid. Thus, in 1986, West European and Japanese banks lent $19 billion to the Soviet Union. This was all the more impressive since the Soviet Union, in turn, supported such client states as Vietnam, Libya and Cuba. In 1985, East Germany dispatched $20 million from a $500 million Western loan to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. It appeared that Western nations were underwriting the failed economic and political systems in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, including ironically their foreign policies aimed at subverting Western democracies. Lenin had predicted as much. But political machinations and economic stagnation, combined with a loss of legitimacy by all socialist regimes, were to undo the colossus. The third crisis in Eastern Europe was the most momentous and fateful in terms of the possible evolution of democratic polities. While the ruling parties throughout Eastern Europe devised more sophisticated methods and strategies for controlling, co-opting, or suppressing dissent and autonomous action, dissenters faced an even more serious obstacle in the apolitical and atomized masses in their respective societies.72 Havel explored via the medium of the story the deadening effect of total bureaucratic control on the hearts, minds, dreams, aspirations and lives of people in advanced totalitarian systems.73 The third crisis in Communist systems was, thus, a crisis of self-understanding due to censorship and self-censorship, of the loss of historical memory, and the resulting alienation and anomie. Paul Gomma, an exiled Romanian writer, summed up the causes of this alienation and anomie in his Open Letter in support of Charter 77: ‘We all live under the same nightmare . . . the same denial of basic rights, the same contempt of the human being, the same lies’.74 Sergey Grigoryants, editor of the unofficial magazine Glasnost (shut down in 1988), released from prison in 1987, reflected in his brief interview with Jennings on the Communist legacy in Russia as ‘70 years of fear among the citizenry’.75 Mihajlo Mihajlov, the noted Yugoslav dissident of Russian origin, had observed as early as 1965: So very much has to be rehabilitated – the value of free thought, the value of authentic democracy, the lasting value of certain basic truths in all domains of human life, the abolition of all secrecy, and more.76

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 53

A process of rediscovery of everyday truths, of moral recovery and spiritual renewal is thus equally necessary as real economic and political reforms in Eastern Europe and beyond. The problematic transplantation of Western democratic mechanisms and institutions to Eastern Europe and Russia bear out the significance of cultural, moral and spiritual preconditions for democracy which remain in infancy in much of the world. Ivo Šiber proposed three criteria for gauging democratic prospects in Central and Eastern Europe: (1) establishment of democratic institutions; (2) peaceful transfer of power; and (3) majority acceptance of basic principles of modern, principally Western European, society. Yet in the former Yugoslavia, Šiber finds that these conditions were fulfilled only in Slovenia, while the other republics still labour under national collectivism and exclusiveness.77 Šiber concludes that for democracy to succeed in Eastern and Central Europe, ‘the liberal idea’s inherent rejection of any kind of collectivist, totalitarian rule should be the guiding light in our daily activities’.78

Conclusion East and West, Alexis de Tocqueville’s proposition of linking liberty to morality and faith is acquiring new relevance at the dawn of the Third Millennium. Tocqueville observed that ‘liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith’.79 It is instructive that the quest for personal identity and values found expression throughout Eastern Europe and the USSR in the growing autonomous nationalist, democratic, and human rights movements, and religious renaissance, undergirded by a thirst for the truth, both historical and contemporary. Yet the quest for national symbols and roots, often embedded in authoritarian belief structures, is pitted against the more universal human quest for greater autonomy and human dignity, ethical conduct, participation, socioeconomic and political reforms, constitutionalism, and the rule of law. Zbigniew Brzezinski was one of the few who predicted in 1988 that Eastern Europe might, indeed, be ripe for revolution based on the classic formula of economic retrogression and relative political liberalization.80 Eastern Europe witnessed in the 1970s and 1980s the rise of a new civil society and an autonomous second culture, complementing the growth of a second economy. Following the 1975 Helsinki Final Act, this new civil society grew increasingly international in scope, drawing on the common concept and standard of universal human rights. The limits to reform in the Soviet bloc were initially set by the Soviet Union, which, however, itself underwent deep internal change pursued by Gorbachev as an attempt to reform Communism. The Yugoslav model, with its conception of party-controlled and managed ‘socialist pluralism’, represented the outer limits of possible liberalization within the framework of a Communist system. In 1989, East European one-party systems based on the monopoly of power and ideology

54 Whence Central Europe?

confronted and crossed ‘The Menshevik Divide’ (Figure 3.1), beyond which open the vistas and challenges of political democracy. Yet post-Communist systems, especially those east of Poland and south of Hungary, remain in a twilight zone between democracy and dictatorship, their rulers and the ruled beguiled by the ideals of a welfare state promised in Marxist–Leninist theory, but unfulfilled in socialist practice.81 In the 1990s, Communist Parties made remarkable electoral comebacks throughout the region, while in Russia some still pine for Stalin and his iron rule. As Mikola Antipovich writes: ‘The Communist ideology fell, but in reality it still exists. It’s not pure Communism, but a kind of surrogate, a virtual Communism.’82 People throughout the region are asked to sacrifice once more, and to put their aspirations for a better life on hold, this time in the name of a democratic future. The great danger is that the masses may become impatient and susceptible once more to unfulfilled, or even impossible to fulfil, promises of instant utopia and deliverance. Fyodor Dostoyevsky cautioned in his tale of The Grand Inquisitor that people may voluntarily bring back tyrannical rule, preferring bread to freedom. It would be an utmost irony, and constitute a betrayal of the aspirations of all those who opposed Communist tyranny, if totalitarian rule – either Communist, nationalist or socialist – were to return to Eastern Europe and Russia via the ballot box.83 Only time will tell which contending heritage – the authoritarian ghost of a traditional past, or the more liberal, humanist and democratic aspirations – will prevail in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the world. In sum, the prospects for individual freedom, pluralism, democracy and an open society rooted in the rule of law and respect for human rights remain a continuing challenge. The obstacles for the nascent democratic post-Communist polities are formidable: low living standards, unemployment, loss of a social welfare network, bureaucracy, mismanagement, corruption, rise of a new class of nouveaux riches composed of former party-state functionaries, organized crime and shrewd entrepreneurs, inter-ethnic conflicts, scapegoating, authoritarian mindsets, unrealistic expectations concerning democracy as a guarantee of prosperity, technological lag, excessive reliance on foreign aid, and a growing disillusionment with the slow pace of change. Even policy experts are often confused about how to advance the goals of privatization and socioeconomic development without backtracking into statism, on the one hand, or anarchy, on the other. Inexperienced Western pundits and policy wonks may have also contributed to raising unrealistic expectations, including the role of foreign aid.84 Undue pessimism and even anti-Western sentiment may follow the naive attempt to transplant Western political institutions in the absence of a requisite political culture embedded and nurtured by indigenous cultures, rooted in a particular nation’s history, language, customs, beliefs and traditions.85 The proper role of religious institutions in contributing to the development of civil society is also unclear and underdeveloped in much of the post-Communist world (with the exception of

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 55

Poland), while church–state relations remain conflicted, East and West. It is also clear by now that neither capitalism nor socialism is a substitute for individual moral responsibility, whether in economics or politics; science, education or the professions; private or public life. Yet, given imperfect human beings, a more humane future presupposes individual liberty and an open society for believers and non-believers alike, which ultimately depend on transcendent grounding in a loving and all-merciful Creator-God. There is reason for optimism that the promise of the peaceful revolution of 1989 may be realized in the post-Communist world, and even inspire others to transform the remaining Communist dictatorships in China, North Korea, Vietnam, Laos and Cuba. The model of the ‘self-limiting’ revolution succeeded across Europe, from Poland to Ukraine. And, in each case, democratic activists–dissidents – individuals and movements – were the catalyst for the rebirth of civic culture and civil society necessary for democratization. As Richard Wolin recalls, activists ‘invoked fundamental concepts and terms of democratic legitimacy – popular sovereignty, rule of law and due process – to morally discredit their adversaries’.86 But this means also that a truly democratic culture needs to retrieve moral and spiritual resources which emphasize the God-given dignity of each individual, and encourage openness to a better future.87

Notes 1 The term ‘Eastern Europe’ in this chapter harks back to Sir Winston Churchill’s famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech at Westminster College, in Fulton, MO, on 5 March 1946, which noted a fateful division of the European Continent from the Baltic to the Adriatic, where Eastern Europe came to be shorthand for the Soviet sphere of influence. According to Churchill: ‘From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow.’ Cf. Evan Luard, ed., The Cold War: A Re-Appraisal (New York: Praeger, 1964), p. 53. The 1989 Revolution, then, marks a watershed year, with the Baltic States, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary reclaiming their historical cultural roots as Central European nations, while the Yugoslav successor states, Romania, Bulgaria and Albania, make up South-Eastern Europe. Former Soviet republics such as Belarus, Moldova and Ukraine may be counted as Eastern Europe, but post-Soviet Russia remains a Eurasian superpower. 2 Human Rights Watch Reports (New York), 1999–2005. 3 Oskar Gruenwald, ‘Belgrade Student Demonstrations, 1996–97: Rebuilding Civil Society in Yugoslavia’, Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies XIII (1/2) (2001), 155–74. 4 Oskar Gruenwald, ‘The Third Yugoslavia: Illyrian League of Autonomous Republics?’, Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies X (1/2) (1998), 115–41.

56 Whence Central Europe? 5 Anna Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming the Communist Past: The Regeneration of Communist Parties in East-Central Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 6 As a twilight zone of democracy and dictatorship, ‘The Menshevik Divide’ alludes to the fateful 1905 split between Mensheviks and Bolsheviks in Russia: an excellent brief historical sketch is that by Merle Fainsod, How Russia Is Ruled, rev. enl. edn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), especially Chapter 2: ‘Bolshevism Before 1917’, pp. 31–59. Figure 3.1 is a heuristic tool or a conceptual map, which attempts to locate East European states relative to each other along two major axes: civic culture (low to high) and civil society (low to high), rather than absolute percentages. It is also arguable whether ‘The Menshevik Divide’ occurs at the 50 per cent or some other level. The single most important benchmark characterizing ‘The Menshevik Divide’ is the possibility of organizing more than one political party, or conversely, the absence of a one-party monopoly of power and ideology. 7 Winston A. Van Horne, ed., Global Convulsions: Race, Ethnicity and Nationalism at the End of the Twentieth Century (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997). 8 Robert Conquest, Reflections on a Ravaged Century (New York: Norton, 2000); Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 9 Václav Havel, ‘Stories and Totalitarianism’, Index on Censorship 17 (1988), 14–21. 10 Besides reports by Human Rights Watch, see also Chinese Human Rights Internet Resources (New York: Human Rights in China, 1999–2005); and Harry Wu, Laogai: The Chinese Gulag. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992). 11 Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, eds, The Civic Culture Revisited (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1980). On the peregrinations of the concept of civil society, which has become central to the discourse on post-Communist systems, see John Keane, Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998). 12 For Baltic perspectives, see Leonidas Donskis, Loyalty, Dissent and Betrayal: Modern Lithuania and East-Central European Moral Imagination (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005).  ale, eds, Human On the Balkans, see Oskar Gruenwald and Karen Rosenblum-C Rights in Yugoslavia (New York: Irvington Publishers, 1986); also Oskar Gruenwald, ‘Yugoslav Camp Literature: Rediscovering the Ghost of a Nation’s Past-PresentFuture’, Slavic Review 46 (3/4) (1987), 513–28, and ‘Response: Camp Literature: Archetype for Dissent’, Slavic Review 48(2) (1989), 280–83. 13 Author’s estimates derived mainly from human rights reports, underground literature, factoring in the typical mixing of political prisoners with common criminals, and the frequent sentencing of politicals on trumped-up criminal charges such as theft, embezzlement, drug use or traffic, traffic violations, etc. The high numbers for the former Yugoslavia include thousands of Kosovo Albanians detained or imprisoned. The numbers for the USSR are probably too low, but given poor recordkeeping and cover-ups, may never be known. For an overall assessment of the human cost of the Gulag Archipelago, see Oskar Gruenwald, ‘The Other Holocaust: Twentieth-Century Communist Genocide’, Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies XII (1/2) (2000), 85–108. 14 Tony Judt, ‘The Dilemmas of Dissidence: The Politics of Opposition in East-Central Europe’, East European Politics and Societies 2 (1988), 185–240; Michael J. Sodaro, in Jane Leftwich Curry, ed., Dissent in Eastern Europe (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp. 82–116. 15 Rudolf Bahro, The Alternative in Eastern Europe (London: NLB, 1978). 16 Helsinki Watch Committee, Ten Years Later: Violations of the Helsinki Accords, August 1985. 3rd edn (New York: HWC, 1985), p. 33.

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 57 17 For a brief assessment of Solzhenitsyn’s moral stance against totalitarianism, see Oskar Gruenwald, ‘The Essential Solzhenitsyn: The Political Nexus or The Russian Connection’, Thought LV (217) (1980), 137–52. 18 On the signal role of mass emigration from the GDR, see Steven Pfaff’s awardwinning Exit–Voice Dynamics and the Collapse of East Germany: The Crisis of Leninism and the Revolution of 1989 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006). 19 On the role of culture in socialist systems, see Oskar Gruenwald, ‘Comparing Socialist Cultures: A Meta-Framework’, Studies in Comparative Communism XI (1978), 75–95. 20 Helsinki Watch (1985), 52. 21 Ibid., 51. 22 ‘Protest Against Reprisals in East Germany’, East European Reporter 3 (1988), 66–7. 23 On the Soviet-led invasion which extinguished the ‘Prague Spring’ by August 1968, see Robert Littell, ed., The Czech Black Book (New York: Avon Books, 1969). 24 Charles Gati, ‘Gorbachev and Eastern Europe’, Foreign Affairs 65 (1987), 958–75; Jiri Pehe, ‘The Prague Spring – in 1988’, Freedom at Issue 102 (1988), 17–23. 25 ‘The Perils of Jazz: Leaders of Czech Jazz Section on Trial’, Human Rights Watch 2 (1987), 2. 26 ‘Dissident Urges Lifting of Ban on Czech Group’, Los Angeles Times, 3 January 1988. 27 H. Gordon Skilling, Charter ‘77 and Human Rights in Czechoslovakia (Cambridge, MA: Allen & Unwin, 1981). 28 Jiri Ruml, ‘Ten Years of Charter 77’, Index on Censorship 16 (1987), 9. 29 Ibid., p. 12. 30 Václav Havel, ‘Letter to Vienna’, Index on Censorship 17 (1988), 46. 31 Michael T. Kaufman, ‘122 in East Europe Proclaim Praise of Hungarian Uprising’, New York Times, 19 October 1986. 32 Iván Völgyes, ‘Parliamentarianism and Pluralism in Eastern Europe: Assessing the Social Bases’, East European Quarterly XXI (1987), 265–74; H. Gordon Skilling, ‘Czechoslovak Political Culture: Pluralism in an International Context’, in Archie Brown, ed., Political Culture and Communist Studies (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1985), pp. 115–33. 33 Helsinki Watch (1985), 22–4. 34 Richard F. Staar, ed., Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1987 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1987), pp. 290–91. 35 Open Doors, European Background Briefs (Ermelo: Open Doors, 1988), 2–3. 36 Open Doors, February 1988, 6. 37 Cited in Helsinki Watch (1985), 20. 38 Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia: The Struggle for Survival, 2nd edn. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 246–50. 39 The Third Revolution had already been anticipated by the Russian poet, Vladimir Mayakovsky: ‘There arises from the dim reaches of time, A different, a Third Revolution – The Revolution of the Spirit!’ Quoted by Anatole Schub, ‘Moscow Summer, Belgrade Winter’, Encounter XXIV (6) (1965), 86. See also Oskar Gruenwald, The Third Revolution: Intellectual and Spiritual Ferment in Yugoslavia (Claremont, CA: MA Thesis, Claremont Graduate University, 1966). 40 Archie Brown and Jack Gray, Political Culture and Political Change in Communist States (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1977), pp. 270–71. 41 For a gripping eyewitness account of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, see Ede Pfeiffer, Child of Communism (New York: Tower Publications, 1958), pp. 152–88.

58 Whence Central Europe? 42 George Schöpflin, ‘Opposition and Para-Opposition: Critical Currents in Hungary, 1968–78; in Rudolf L. Tökés, ed., Opposition in Eastern Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), pp. 142–86. 43 Cf. Ferenc Fehér, Agnés Heller and György Márkus, Dictatorship Over Needs (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1983). 44 Helsinki Watch (1985), 57. 45 Ibid., 58. 46 Index on Censorship (February 1988), 37. 47 Staar, Yearbook (1987), p. 308. 48 Helsinki Watch (1985), 65 and 67. 49 Open Doors (May 1988), 5. 50 ‘Demonstration in Budapest’, East European Reporter 2 (1986), 2–4. 51 Chronicle of Higher Education, 27 April 1988. 52 Ibid., 25 May 1988. 53 Newsweek, 25 April 1988. 54 Peter Brod, ‘Glasnost: Eastern Europe’, Index on Censorship 16 (1987), 28. 55 Peter Jennings, ABC-TV, 24 May 1988. 56 Gáspár Miklós Tamás, ‘The Case for Anti-Communism’, East European Reporter 2 (1987), 71. 57 Helsinki Watch (1985), 67. 58 Cited in Kaufman, New York Times, 19 October 1986. 59 George Konrád, Freedom House Symposium on the Rise of Civil Society in Eastern Europe, New York, 25 June 1988. 60 William P. Robinson, ed., August 1980: The Strikes in Poland (Munich: Radio Free Europe Research, 1980). 61 David S. Mason, Public Opinion and Political Change in Poland, 1980–1982 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 233. 62 ‘Underground KOS on Chernobyl, 4th May 1986’, East European Reporter 2 (1986), 56. 63 ‘Freedom and Peace: New Movement in Poland’, Human Rights Watch 3 (1987), 3. 64 Hugh Seton-Watson, ‘Where Is Europe, What Is Europe?’ Encounter 65 (1985), 9–17. 65 George Weigel, The Final Revolution: The Resistance Church and the Collapse of Communism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 66 Helsinki Watch (1985), 69. 67 ‘Katyn: An Open Letter to Soviet Intellectuals’, East European Reporter 3 (1988), 23. 68 Cf. Almond and Verba, Civic Culture Revisited; Giovanni Sartori, The Theory of Democracy Revisited (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1987); and Keane, Civil Society, passim. 69 Jacques Rupnik, Freedom House Symposium on the Rise of Civil Society in Eastern Europe, New York, 25 June 1988. 70 Freedom House, Glasnost: How Open? (New York: Freedom House, 1987). 71 See Oskar Gruenwald, The Yugoslav Search for Man: Marxist Humanism in Contemporary Yugoslavia (South Hadley, MA: J.F. Bergin, 1983). 72 George Konrád, ‘Censorship and the State Owned Citizens’, Dissent 30 (1983), 448–55; Havel, ‘Stories and Totalitarianism,’ pp. 14–21. 73 Ibid. 74 Paul Gomma, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 10 February 1977. 75 Peter Jennings interview, ABC-TV, 24 May 1988. 76 Mihajlo Mihajlov, ‘Moscow Summer, 1964. Part III’, The New Leader XLVIII (1965), 14. 77 Ivo Šiber, in ‘Why the Democrats Failed: The Case of Yugoslavia’, Uncaptive Minds 9 (3–4) (1997), 145. 78 Ibid., 146.

Reflections on the 1989 Revolution 59 79 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, ed. Richard D. Heffner (New York: New American Library, 1956), p. 34. 80 Zbigniew Brzezinski, ‘East of Germany, West of Russia’, Freedom at Issue 103 (1988), 21. 81 See Gruenwald, ‘The Third Yugoslavia’, pp. 115–41; and ‘Belgrade Student Demonstrations’, pp. 155–74. 82 Mikola Antipovich, quoted in Bryon MacWilliams, ‘A Country “Nostalgic for Communism” Belarus Stifles Academic Freedom’, Chronicle of Higher Education, 17 March 2000, A57. 83 Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming the Communist Past, passim. 84 Janine R. Wedel, Collision and Collusion: The Strange Case of Western Aid to Eastern Europe, 1989–1998, rev. edn (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). 85 Andrew C. Janos, East Central Europe in the Modern World: The Politics of the Borderlands From Pre-To Postcommunism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002). 86 Richard Wolin, ‘From Poland to Ukraine, Self-Limiting Revolution Bears Its Democratic Fruit’, Chronicle of Higher Education, 11 February 2005, B10. 87 Oskar Gruenwald, ‘The Third Culture: An Integral Vision of the Human Condition’, Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies XVII (1/2) (2005), 139–60.

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Part II The Legacy of the National State

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4 The Secularized Cult of St Stephen in Modern Hungary Juliane Brandt

Introduction St Stephen, the founder of the medieval Hungarian state and a powerful supporter of the Catholic Church, canonized as early as 1083, offers an interesting example of how a patron saint’s cult can be redefined and revitalized under changing socio-structural and political circumstances. Although fading at times, there is a continuous line of reference to him over the centuries. In this respect, certain interesting steps were undertaken during the economic, political and cultural modernization period of the Dualist era at the end of the nineteenth century, in a society still influenced by traditional religion, but also in the Communist state of the second half of the twentieth century, a state hostile to religion and a society already secularized in its structural and cultural aspects. The post-Communist period after 1989 brought additional perspectives to the reinterpretation and refunctionalization of the national patron saint. St Stephen’s case also offers the opportunity to investigate how these reinterpretations have been executed in a field of complementary cults, supplementing and specifying also the meaning of the former, turning it into a ‘lieu de mémoire’1 or a ‘narrative abbreviation’2 in modern society. In this respect, the patron saint was placed in a field of competing points of reference, marking different narratives of the national past, different interpretations of the composition of the political community, and different definitions of the mission of that community or the challenges faced by it. This chapter examines what happened to the cult of St Stephen when it was secularized in modern Hungary. A rock opera, first staged in 1983, provides an especially interesting example of such reinterpretation in the way it tells Stephen’s story to a modern audience in a country with a socialist political system, and obviously also with some kind of agreement from the government. ‘King Stephen’ (‘István a király’) was a big success, soon followed by a film version. People who had dissociated themselves from the regime were enthusiastic because of the opera’s reference to national history, and many spectators even perceived it as a positive 63

64 The Legacy of the National State

presentation of certain suppressed Hungarian traditions. Opposition critics, on the other hand, accused the work of art of delivering an apotheosis of the Kádár regime. Today one can see how the opera is used by various political groups to present ‘their’ version of Hungarian culture to different audiences. For example, the Ministry of Culture has promoted it as a representative work of art at the Weeks of Hungarian Culture and similar events abroad, while the national opposition has expressed its approval for other reasons. Some audiences could, in the latter case, identify with Stephen’s defeated heathen rival, Koppány. But performances of ‘King Stephen’ were also successful events at European festivals, where the opera was supposed to hint at Stephen’s ‘Western alliance’ and the defeat of the pagan uprising was interpreted as the first step in Hungary’s integration in European culture. Interpretations and uses of this work of art are thus manifold and contradictory, which requires that we look for a starting point for these conflicting readings in the opera itself. For this reason, the chapter reviews the different versions of Stephen’s cult and asks which of them were activated in the late Kádár era.

The cults of St Stephen and of Mary The reference to Stephen represents the story of a medieval king blended with the tradition of the adoration of a saint in the Catholic Church. The medieval saint was appreciated predominantly as a protector of the Church, as the founder of a Christian kingdom, and because of his merits in Christianizing his subjects, as the founder of churches and monasteries throughout his realm. Stephen’s father, prince Géza, had been baptized and had his son educated as a Christian king. Even the Western orientation of the country had already been chosen by his grandfather, Taksony. King Stephen merely completed this process. At the same time, his figure symbolized the unity of a kingdom inhabited by many different peoples; in his will he asked that their diversity be respected. As in many other instances in the Middle Ages, his canonization was encouraged by a successor who sought to use him to strengthen the rule of the dynasty, and the pope agreed to this.3 Stephen’s medieval cult stood, therefore, for the strength and unity of the realm, and was enhanced by political symbolism such as the transfer of the date of the yearly law court from Assumption Day to the saint’s name day on 20 August. The relic of the ruler’s right hand, the ‘Holy Right’, also became an object of adoration. Fairly early, Stephen’s cult was combined with that of the Virgin Mary, to whose protection he is said to have recommended his realm after his death. Mary thus became ‘Patrona Hungariae’. The occupation of vast parts of the country by the Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the survival of the Reformation in the conquered parts and also in the dependent, but not conquered, province of Transylvania, the many hardships the Reformation faced in royal Hungary under Habsburg rule, and the turbulent political events and fraction-building

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processes during those centuries, put Stephen’s veneration in a new framework. After the reconquest of the country and its resettlement mainly with Catholic settlers from Western Europe, the cult of Mary became the central point of reference. The anti-Turkish elements of the cult faded over the decades as the Regnum Marianum grew. The cult, practised in many places of pilgrimage all over the country, some of them of country-wide importance, united an ethnically heterogeneous people, and, as the folklorist Sándor Bálint suggests, embraced the people in a unified cult of Sacra Hungaria.4 At the same time, St Stephen’s cult was maintained, with the main celebrations taking place on 20 August. In 1771, Queen Maria Theresa had the ‘Holy Right’, which was kept up to that point in Ragusa (Dubrovnik), transferred to the Sigismund Chapel of the king’s palace in Buda, an action that helped strengthen the cult. Both cults – that of Stephen and the Virgin Mary – as well as many others,5 not only emphasized the unity of the country, but also underlined the aim of the Habsburgs to Catholicize the country in the service of the Roman Catholic Church. A series of laws suppressed Protestantism in Hungary, often in contradiction with earlier laws, and conversely in Transylvania, the political process ignored the formal continuance of older laws to the benefit of Roman Catholics. The rights of Protestants to practise their religion varied in different parts of the country, depending on their former status and their geographic distance from Vienna.6 This policy of oppression in favour of Catholicism, which often produced waves of persecution and, from Charles III and Maria Theresa onwards, a slow death, included the obligation on the part of other confessions such as the Lutherans, the Calvinists, or the Jews, to observe Roman Catholic holidays, in this case that of St Stephen.7 For the Protestants, name days of saints such as Stephen lacked religious meaning and the cult or, in their view, even the ‘adoration’ of saints, was a severe religious error. Stephen’s cult connected the idea of the unity of the realm with the role of the Habsburgs as holders of the Holy crown and as Stephen’s successors, and also with the Catholic character of the kingdom. On the other hand, among Protestants, who were the most important group among the oppressed religious denominations, a tradition of unlawful religious persecution was commemorated thanks to a shrinking, but still respectable, Protestant group among the nobility. For them, the story of the crown was linked with that of the law and the constitution. Important figures and ‘narrative abbreviations’ in this tradition were those of the defenders of Protestantism and the Hungarian constitution; put in modern terms, this meant that the leaders of the magnate uprisings against the Habsburgs also proclaimed religious freedom when they tried to proclaim their independence from the former. These heroic figures were not regarded as saints, nor put into the middle of religious cults, but were integrated into the world of images and constructions surrounding the more strictly religious ‘core’ of Calvinist or Lutherans ideas.8 St Stephen’s cult gained new importance when Archduke Joseph, palatine of Hungary, ordered in 1818 that an official procession that carried the relic

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of the ‘Holy Right’ from the chapel in the king’s palace to the Church of Our Lady and back again be held on 20 August.9 Representatives of the state and the orders, the city, schools, the guilds and the corporations participated in the procession, with the ‘visiting’ of the relic in the Church of Our Lady as a visible public manifestation that also combined the cult of Stephen with that of Mary.10 The revolution and the fight for independence of 1848–49 marked a change in the character of the celebration of the cult of St Stephen. In the first place, the procession was not held in public for fear of political demonstrations. In this respect, the period leading to the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 can be seen as a transitional period. National feelings could find their expression only in restricted forms, but even so, burials of important writers or their anniversaries were used to express these feelings. The first such celebration was the death of the writer Mihály Vörösmarty in 1855. More than 20,000 people attended the ‘private’ ceremony. In the 1860s, in a slightly milder political climate, the birthday of Ferenc Kazinczy (1859) was celebrated; in May 1860, a monument for Ferenc Kölcsey was inaugurated, as were in June 1860 a statue to the poet Sándor Kisfaludy and a monument to the poet Dániel Berzsenyi. As Katalin Sinkó writes: ‘The cult of poets and writers really meant the design and celebration of the genius of the nation.’11 A similarly big event was the funeral of István Széchenyi, the leading figure of the age of Reform of the 1830s, who committed suicide in April 1860. Széchenyi’s death opened a range of burials of politicians over the next few decades that became similarly important events, such as that of László Teleki in 1861, the reburial of Lajos Battyány in 1870, the death of Ferenc Deák in 1876, the death of Lajos Kossuth in 1894, and the inauguration of his mausoleum in 1898. From the outset, these literary and political cults were not of a religious character, but were public and they borrowed patterns from well-known religious cults. They symbolized ideas of national independence, and the commemoration of the victims of 1848 merely added to them. To canalize these national feelings, the procession of the ‘Holy Right’ was allowed again in August 1860. The ceremony, with the spontaneous singing of national religious songs by the crowd, marked a slow change in the character of the ceremony, once a purely religious one, which became quickly enriched with political meaning and integrated into political strategies. It became part of the symbolic inventory of the political culture of the country, an element of national political culture. In the age of Dualism, there was a parallelism of official celebrations and commemorations of St Stephen, hinting at the idea of a multi-ethnic realm united under the Habsburgs, with a reference to their lineage from the Hungarian Árpád dynasty, whose purpose was to satisfy the national feelings of their Hungarian subjects. This reference was slightly inconsistent with St Stephen’s cult, and, because of this contradiction, was never completely successful. Beside this official cult, a counter-tradition was maintained, one that referred to national independence, which, in the eyes of the opposition, the so-called parties of 1848, was not sufficiently guaranteed by the Compromise.

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This counter-tradition continued the commemoration and even the civil cult of other central figures. In the historical narratives of that camp, King Stephen – even when called a Saint12 – was an important ruler after Árpád, who had established Hungary. Stephen had the merit of creating a powerful realm linked to Europe, and was one in a line of other rulers such as Béla IV, the builder of Hungary after the Mongol raid, or Matthias, who, in the words of these narratives, defeated the Ottoman Turks. As these narratives – as well as that woven around St Stephen in the Catholic imperial cult – went back to current and former political alliances that were inscribed in them, the ‘oppositional’ or ‘pro-independence’ narrative tended to be Protestant or non-Catholic. The link of denominational fractions and even political camps with liberalism and independence versus loyalty to Vienna and the Habsburg dynasty happened for a number of reasons. First of all, the persecution of Protestantism under the Habsburgs from the sixteenth century on had created a political alliance that united the opposition of the estates and the representatives of the Protestant churches against the crown. Religion served the politics of opposition of the estates and in their political aspirations the latter usually favoured Protestantism. In the Protestant churches, the experience of persecution, of being in a minority situation, of living an endangered existence, and of anti-Habsburg opposition, in the defence of the old Hungarian constitution (the Hungarian Law), as represented by the opposition of the estates, was turned into a tradition and a historical narrative. After Árpád and Stephen, heroic figures included the kings Béla IV and Matthias, the magnates István Bocskai (the initiator of the Treaty of Vienna in 1606 and Article 1/1608), Gábor Bethlen (who signed the Peace of Nikolsburg in 1621, and Art. 2/1622),13 and Ferenc Rákóczi (Treaty of Linz in 1645, and Arts 5 and 6/1647), the Protestant ministers sent to the galleys by Leopold I in 1674 Pressburg trials, the Lutheran Lajos Kossuth, hero of 1848–49, and a series of writers and national ´´fi, who fell on the battlefield of Segesvár geniuses, beginning with Sándor Peto (Sishisoara) in 1849.14 This historical narrative, produced in the context of Protestant institutions of higher learning and taught more or less openly after the Compromise in Protestant schools and from church pulpits, was reserved for national events such as commemorations of the recent past, the inauguration of statues to the heroes of 1848, and even election campaigns. As the Protestants tried to prove their contribution to the survival and the development of the nation, not least emphasizing their importance in the ongoing debates over the state funding of churches and schools or in church politics, they acquired a ‘national’ aura. On the other hand, like any denomination in modernizing Europe, finding itself confronted with structural secularization,15 they eagerly borrowed the ‘meaning’ of the national idea for their own religious purposes. There was another reason to encourage this tendency of the oppositional narrative of Protestantism. The official cult of St Stephen was one of a state that no longer had Roman Catholicism as a state religion, but which, even after it

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gave equal rights to other ‘accepted’ religious communities, such as the Protestant churches and later the Jews,16 used the Catholic Church to designate official state ceremonies and holidays. This was perceived as a constant offence to the Protestants. In these circumstances, the use of St Stephen’s day to create a national holiday, as initiated by Parliament in 1888 and finally put into law in 1891, was not a solution that satisfied a multi-ethnic and especially multireligious country. The pre-history of the day and the cult made the date suitable in the eyes of Catholics. But Roman Catholics made up only about half of the entire population, and only two-thirds of the Magyar component.17 For Protestants and other non-Catholics, the celebration of this day with a church ceremony, namely, the procession of the ‘Holy Right’ with the participation of representatives of the state and the successors of the former magnates, was offensive. In addition, it reminded them of the older practice of the enforced respect of Roman Catholic holidays. But all this did not influence the decision of Parliament to establish St Stephen’s day as a national holiday, which was also celebrated in the postwar period. It fitted into the so-called ‘neo-baroque’ style of state representation and fulfilled the desire to remember the entire kingdom, which, it was hoped, would be regained after the Treaty of Trianon.18 The denominational and religious split in the population remained until after the end of the Second World War. However, the introduction of a Communist regime in a step-by-step process in the postwar years, which ended with the landslide results of the elections of May 1949 and the introduction of a Communist constitution in August of the same year,19 created a completely new framework for former patron saints. The new regime was hostile to religion for philosophical reasons, and also regarded religion as a competing ideology and thus a potential challenge to its monopoly of power. Moreover, the churches were regarded as representatives of the old regime. The religious character of the cult of St Stephen therefore posed a problem. In the early 1950s, the Catholic Church was persecuted and all other churches were strongly restricted in their activities. After 1948, the procession of the ‘Holy Right’ could no longer take place in public. As a figure of the national past and a symbol of a strong state, Stephen had the potential to fit positively in a reinterpretation of national history; however, he was also perceived as a representative of an exploiting class and an exploitative system. An examination of certain history textbooks shows that until the 1970s, this latter interpretation remained at the forefront, while the recognition of his merits for creating a strong state – and a slightly more subtle and complex way of handling this interpretation with older history in general – slowly but surely gained favour.20 But, in the first years after the war, the Communists were fairly creative in overlapping the old holiday and the older meaning of 20 August – St Stephen’s day – with new meanings. Sport events instead of the traditional religious ceremony were held on that date,21 and after the Communist takeover, a tradition of thanksgiving was imposed on 20 August to commemorate ‘the day of the new bread’. Finally, the day was

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turned into the day of the constitution – thus taking up former elements, such as the founding of the state, but emphasizing the new meaning – a constitution that finally anchored the rule of the Communist Party and the working class. Religion was not the only problem in dealing with St Stephen. The new regime was partial to the version of national history of the counter-narrative, the one focusing on the fight for independence, with the counter-heroes from the ‘national’ uprisings, to whom were added peasant leaders and other figures who could be seen as early fighters for democratization and social progress.22 As this interpretation was based on the implications of the counter-narrative and was linked to important groups of critical intellectuals in the interwar period, it was visibly influenced by the tradition of the Protestant narration of national history. Such an approach did not work in favour of a cult of St Stephen. Over the years, the day of the constitution and the new bread turned into a day of self-representation of the state, with parades along the Danube River, and huge fireworks (which had already been organized in the interwar period). Other important dates for the regime were 4 April, the day of the ‘liberation of the country’, when Soviet troops occupied all of Hungary during the Second World War, and 1 May, the holiday of the working class. Dates connected with the older national history created problems, such as 15 March (the beginning of the revolution of 1848), which was linked with the left-wing groups that the Communists had neutralized when taking power even though they had hinted strongly at national independence and democratic selfdetermination,23 and 23 October, the beginning of the uprising of 1956, which remained unacceptable. The new version of the system of state holidays had not only a lay, nonreligious, but also an a-national character. But the attempt to reorganize the collective memory by an official doctrine of history as well as an official commemoration could not completely abolish or brush aside the older patterns. Collective memory itself, in its double link to collective and to individual components, proved to be an important obstacle to this. As Jan Assmann indicates, the integration of potentially manifold individual experiences, imaginations and commemorative constructions into a common concept, or the connection of the former with the latter in the framework of a collective identity, was the result of a functioning collective memory.24 Individual memory, bound by social interaction into the ‘communicative memory’ of concrete groups, and ‘collective memory’ on the other hand, that is to say the culturally remembered history of the community can, however, be separated.25 In the case of Hungary, as in several neighbouring countries, those elements of the official memory that reflected the recent past remained in contrast with the heterogeneity of the past and the experiences of many of the citizens. This situation, when bound into the communicative practice suggested by Assmann, helped the survival and the reformulation of earlier frameworks of interpretation, which could be reused to interpret current developments and experiences.

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St Stephen’s day was thus given new meanings that partly connected it to former elements of the cult. But the religious character of the holiday was neglected and celebrated only by the Catholic Church and only in church buildings. This happened in a society that had undergone a process of secularization and de-Christianization,26 a process actively enforced by the cultural policies of the ruling party.

The Return of St Stephen This secular approach might have endured, had it not been for the economic fragility of the Communist system and a changing international environment, which resulted in changes in cultural policies. This happened in an unexpected way, even for many contemporaries, and to a certain extent came as a surprise, when the staging of a rock opera in the summer of 1983 with St Stephen – ‘Stephen, the king’, to be more precise – as the central character, happened around St Stephen’s day and during the anniversary of his canonization. As already mentioned, the opera was accepted by the government as a work of art. It was soon made into a film based on the open-air staging of the opera. Opera and film were produced with official support. The critique of the samizdat, which drew a parallel between Stephen and ‘King János’ (Kádár), might even be taken as an approval of an interpretation opting for an innocent political message. On the other hand, contemporaries referred to it as a work with an oppositional message, at least one with a strong national subtext, and not with a mere ‘socialist’ message. Several layers of the opera (or its film version, respectively) contained starting points for these differing, even conflicting, interpretations. The story is a simple one. After the death of his father Géza, Stephen was designated his successor as prince of the Hungarians. At the same time, however, appealing to a pagan tradition, his uncle Koppány claimed the succession as the next male relative. He also married his brother’s widow, Sarolt. Stephen faced an inner conflict as a result, but in the end accepted a confrontation with Koppány and agreed to be declared the new ruler. Stephen considered it the interest of his country to live in peace, and that is why he supported the acceptance of Christianity and an alliance with Rome, as had his father. Had Koppány been willing to rule in this way, Stephen would have withdrawn and handed over the throne to him. But Koppány opted for independence and for the preservation of tradition. In the conflict that ensued, Stephen defeated Koppány, whose dead body was quartered (and exhibited), events at which the opera and the film hinted only symbolically. Stephen was then crowned king of the Hungarians. According the story told in the opera – in the film it is underlined by the text presented in the introduction – Stephen was the representative of a necessary decision to do the best for his country and his people. The unfolding

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of Hungarian history was depicted as essentially inevitable, including Koppány’s defeat. Hints of the present, of the heritage of Stephen, and of the modern Hungarian state, were ubiquitous. They were evident in the sparse decorations in the form of ruins or building sites of ancient Hungarian churches.27 The men carrying Géza’s catafalque wore black suits like ‘the people’ when they were depicted as the population of the age of Reform or the revolutionary youth of 1848. And when Stephen was finally crowned king, tricolours whirled around the scene and fireworks hinted at the traditional fireworks on 20 August. By showing Stephen’s inner struggle before his final decision, the acceptance of that decision as a necessary compromise was portrayed as an act of independence, as the price of giving up tradition and accepting instead a new ideology and the integration of Hungary into a larger political framework, in this case the Catholic Church. The aim of the opera was to gain some sympathy, and even if it referred to events of the eleventh century, it was read as a pertaining to more recent Hungarian history. This is what opposition critics explained in samizdat publications. The most prominent was the article by ‘Emericus’ in Hírmondó, with the title ‘János, the king’,28 a title that no one could misunderstand. Emericus interpreted the rock opera as an ‘ideological direct hit’, an apologetic work, and even an apotheosis of the regime.29 He wrote: ‘The St Stephen of the opera, who resembles more the St Stephen of the legends than the historical actor who had once lived, was given only those characteristics with which the party propaganda tried to whitewash Kádár’s role in 1956.’30 According to Emericus, the national interest was a legitimizing principle used to create a continuity of over 1000 years of history and could even help transfer Kádár into the national pantheon. And Koppány’s question to the people, the question of the Hungarian revolutions (fixed in Peto´´ fi’s ‘National Song’) ‘shall we be free, or slaves?’ (‘rabok legyünk, vagy szabadok?’) was, according to this critic, answered by the opera: ‘Well, you can’t be free, but at least be grateful, because the light of grace is streaming towards you, and you can even feel yourselves as Hungarians, of course, only carefully, and under police observation.’31 The author of the article then falsified the ideological claims of that parallel: unlike Kádár in 1956, Stephen could at least choose between Byzantium and Western Christianity. Stephen relied on domestic supporters while in 1956 an external power found a willing tool in the person of Kádár to save and preserve its authority over the country. In addition, Western European feudalism was a more developed system than the Byzantine one and allowed Hungary 500 years of independent existence, in contrast to the Soviet system, which chained the country to a backward model and placed it in the historical continuity of an absence of independence that had been established 500 years before.32 This interpretation stands in contradiction to the success of the opera, as well as to its popularity after the fall of the regime, and remains outside the actual context of its writing or of the film production. Some moments in the play nevertheless support or allow such an interpretation, as pointed out in samizdat

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publications, for example the simple fact of needing official permission and the financing of the staging and the film, and also their presentation in public. The text of the introduction to the film is quite explicit in this respect. It mentions, among others, contributions from the dance ensembles of the People’s Army, the Military Academy and the Ministry of the Interior. All this does not support the idea of an oppositional work of art. Didactical statements by the creators of the film underlined this, even if they were made to get permission for the planned production; books may be written in secret and stay in chests of drawers, waiting for politically more suitable times; opera staging and films simply cannot. Some elements of the plot point even more to this interpretation. Two important initiatives, the one to fight Koppány, and the one not to allow him to be buried but to quarter him as a deterrent, were initially not proposed by Stephen himself, but by his mother Sarolt. She points out: ‘Enough now, there was already too much of harmful memories. A heroic past goes together with treason and uproar: barbarian melody, barbarian song, disgusting, no question. Seize them both, I don’t tolerate rebellion.’33 And when the reconciliation of the survivors on both sides seemed possible and Stephen was willing to give the dead body of the defeated enemy to his daughter, the mother interfered and ordered that it be quartered. The girl and the pagan singer leave – is it the country that they leave?34 The fact that these measures came from a person other than Stephen allows us to assume the apology of a political leader bowing to external pressure, allows us to see Stephen as somebody who had severe inner conflicts, but suffered and fought them and then accepted obediently the will of – the Party? He himself was ‘good’, but could not bring about another decision. This is, of course, a daring interpretation, but a possible one. The opera and the film were perceived positively because they referred to Stephen and dealt with him as a national ruler instead of placing him within the framework of the class struggle. The samizdat regarded this, too, as part of the so-called Kádár compromise, a concession to the public’s need for nationalism, and the offer of a certain degree of nationalism in lieu of improving the standard of living.35 Emericus even assumed that the rock opera was an occasion to see how well the acceptance of some nationalism could work to overcome tensions originating from the economic decline and declining living standards.36 That the defeated Koppány had sympathetic features and, as an honourable enemy, gave Stephen the chance to be victorious over an equal enemy, would thus be part of the ideological offer. Contradictory interpretations also referred to the appearance of both main characters and to the features they shared. An important factor underlying such features in the opera is the music. Others are the casting, the presentation of the collective character – ‘the people’ – or symbolic statements such as the prophecy of Torda, Koppány’s pagan singer. The filmmakers were admittedly inspired by Jesus Christ Superstar. Rock music is blended with elements of church music, of Gregorian and of chromatic chant

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on Stephen’s side, and Hungarian folk music on the pagan side. Historically, this is correct: the story is about Stephen’s creation of a Western alliance, the reception and spreading of Christianity, and thus the country’s link to a more complex and subtle culture with a higher potential of development and power. The recourse to the heritage of five-tonal music to illustrate pagan ambitions is recourse to what developed later from the artistic heritage of the ancestors. Switching sides would have been absurd. But the connection of (real) traditional music and rock is appealing in a way that is obvious to everybody, even to those listening only to popular music. The amalgamation of rock music and the early European chromatic tradition – which is a tradition of a domesticated and self-restricting sensuality – is a project contradictory in itself. In principle, musical solutions for both camps offer chances for identification, but for the ears of the modern listener the sounds of pagan music were especially fascinating. There is nothing comparable that the Christian camp could offer. Apart from that, the best singers were united on the pagan side. The Illés band sang the vox populi, which changed sides over and again, but Márta Sebestyén (as Koppány’s daughter) and Ferkó Nagy (as his singer) were Koppány’s followers; the Roman Catholic camp had nothing similar. The viewer may interpret these effects of the musical illustration of both sides as a hint to the losses to which progress is always linked. They might as well have suggested that he/she identify with the defeated camp. The casting and appearance of several other characters produced similarly ambivalent effects. Again, one can point to the necessities of the historical background that make this solution preferable. Stephen was presented as a figure of light. He appeared as a slim young man in the film version with white skin and a well-cut, gentleman-like, brown beard. He was clothed in a white, tight-fitting dress that underlined his slim stature and self-controlled gestures. After his coronation as prince of the Hungarians, he added an embroidered vest with Hungarian folklore ornaments on bright leather. The ruler’s appearance was thus slightly abstract – as he represented the new, ascetic ideal of Christianity, the ideal of service for his county and for an idea – as demanded by the new Christian God. The subtlety and complexity of the culture that he represented gave him this appearance. His wife, historically the Bavarian princess Gisela, was a blonde and virtuous figure. Stephen’s opponent Koppány, on the other hand, was a good-looking macho man in his prime, with dark skin, his hair plaited – as Hungarian peasants often did until the nineteenth century. He showed his bare hairy chest and obviously demonstrated in this way his vitality and physical strength. In the language of the early 1980s – and we have to take into account the shifts in fashion and cultural codes from West to East, thus in terms of the aesthetic ideals of the late 1970s – he met very much the ideal of youth culture. In the figures of Stephen and Koppány, the ‘natural’, the raw, and the uncivilized were confronted with the civilized and the progressive. The message that the meeting of socialist ideology and historic thought might work out to the advantage of Stephen would have been less

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appealing if it had been deciphered with the ubiquitous code of the youth and rock culture of the late 1970s, and could even translate itself into an emotionally based superiority on the part of Koppány. Several scenes as well as the presentation of other figures were also left ambivalent. This refers especially to the collective character, ‘the people’. The ‘people’ was presented by three singers, a choir, and the dancing masses, respectively. The people were obviously willing to follow any side, as long as there was some chance of success – as Stephen’s mother Sarolt estimated quite correctly. Some songs underlined this interpretation by a cynical self-critique – man is mean, ‘gyarló az ember’, according to the song of the three men who were standing apart from the masses, always joining the (potentially) victorious side.37 They appeared in Koppány’s camp, they surrounded Sarolt, they celebrated Stephen’s election as prince, they hung around with Koppány again, and finally they obeyed King Stephen. With respect to this experience, there is the need for someone to act in the long-term interest of the people and of ‘the country’, and Stephen, as this presentation suggests, does so. Koppány refused to do so, and preferred what he called independence and tradition. Another problem is posed by the message or prophecy of Torda, Koppány’s singer. Just before the decisive battle he proclaimed: ‘Koppány, when you defeat Stephen, our heroes will not perish in times to come . . . We will win at Mohács, Dózsa will become our king George. . . . Rákóczi will conquer the world; with Kossuth the Republic of the Danubian Basin will become reality.’38 (In the film, the scene is underlined with scenes from historical films showing the events mentioned.) Of course Torda could not, from his time horizon, know about these future events. He could only offer them as the dream of a shiny future, of future greatness. But his text hints at events of the ‘progressive’ narrative of Hungarian history. Dózsa, the leader of the peasant uprising, would not be burned on an iron throne, but become king and realize the alternative that we cannot know. Hungary would defeat the Ottoman Empire – at Mohács and presumably elsewhere. Rákóczi would then, with this pre-history, not be forced into his Turkish exile by the Habsburgs, and Kossuth would successfully create a republic. This is an identification option for nearly everyone not completely free from any national and social sentiment. But the vision contains the idea of power and a great state. Torda’s proclamation concluded: ‘The people here will be powerful, from Rome to Greek Byzantium, from the Rhine to Levedia, they will fear the name of your descendants. . . . We become a great power over the centuries. Rákóczi will conquer the world . . .’, and it is in this context that Kossuth’s republic is also found. This daydream of power was an obvious vision for a tribal leader and his singer, and for a feudal lord as well. It does not overdo what others hoped; it simply sketches what might happen or might have happened, if not the enemy, but the Hungarians had returned victoriously from clashes still to come. Moreover, the unfolding of Hungarian history that Torda’s vision hinted at – the failed uprisings and lost opportunities – made possible the interpretation

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of Hungarian history as one of failed battles or forced submissions. Central events of that history were or would still be seen from this perspective before the battles took place – Muhi, Mohács, Szatmár, Világos, Arad, and Trianon, at which the opera carefully avoids hinting. The identification with the defeated side became an option for everyone socialized in the Hungarian language and trained in Hungarian history as national history. This would also include identification with Koppány, who, in the story told by the opera, soon lost the battle. Torda’s vision – as a prophecy that did not materialize, since Koppány lost – also pointed to that pattern of Hungarian national history. As a result of these moments in the opera (or the film), ‘King Stephen’ was a work of art that could, without severe interventions, be used to demonstrate the claims of self-defined successors of the one or the other, of Stephen or of Koppány. In any case, it illustrated aesthetically the cultural losses and the price progress demands – or for that matter every development – as a choice between options, which allowed only one solution at a time. That is why the opera stands out as a confession for a European idea, as a cultural event for Hungarians abroad, or simply as a historical play with interesting rock music. The interpretations offered when it was first staged were obvious and deliberate; it was hard to interpret the opera even though it was staged during the late Kádár era. The atmosphere of that time and the contradictory cultural policies of the regime made possible a multitude of readings. The policy of the three ‘T’s to describe the range of possible attitudes towards works of arts by the regime as ‘támogatni; tu rni; tiltani’ – that is to say supporting, tolerating or forbidding them – allowed a range of attitudes more or less friendly to the regime, or even acceptable, as long as they were not evidently oppositional. This, too, was probably helpful for the positive reception of ‘King Stephen’ and helped it to achieve additional success. This was demonstrated by the fate after the fall of Communism, of a production of Attila – another figure of early Hungarian history – by some of the involved artists; they hoped in vain to resurrect this success story.39 So far, these observations have focused on the opera and the readings ascribed to it. Rereading and reinterpreting national as well as regional history with explicit or implicit reference to politically and culturally desired frameworks for future development has been, as presented in the introduction to this volume, a fairly intense process in all the Central European states in the age of emerging nation-states as well as in the post-socialist era. The ambiguity of meanings and possible readings ascribed to the rock opera as well as its ‘functioning’ in different settings also allows us to draw some conclusions on the state of mind of the general public. These are of some interest with regard to the idea of Europe and Hungary’s membership in the EU in 2004. Rewriting and reinterpreting the country’s history, even more the forced acceptance of the official version(s) under state socialism, which froze earlier contradicting patterns rather than extinguishing them, resulted in a multitude of interpretations and attitudes to the nation-state and Europe, where they were potentially

76 The Legacy of the National State

competing with each other, but more often simply denying each other. Existing as basic attitudes rather than elaborated systems of thought, these attitudes are activated when promises of supranational political settings show up on the horizon or fade away under the impressions of the costs of structural change and incompetent political leadership. This is illustrated by the attitudes towards EU membership in the years before joining, during the campaign around the vote, and since 1 May 2004, when Hungary joined the EU. The splitting of the electorate into two camps of nearly equal size muddled rather than clarified the ambiguity and thus prevented the transformation of these emotional attitudes into a coherent system of ideas.

Conclusion Over the centuries, St Stephen turned from a saint of the Catholic Church into a figure of a historical narrative. This transformation was based on the fact that the historic model was a person with merits for the Church, which canonized him in return, and also for the state, in whose historical narrative he was remembered in differing and competing versions. Alongside the historical narrative, the religious cult also survived. However, since the Reformation and the appearance of denominational churches, the cult became something of a phenomenon within the religious sphere. The linked interests of denominational groups and political factions proved to be an important factor in integrating Stephen into different versions of the history of the community. The most important link is the one that was bound to the Habsburgs, who held the crown of Saint Stephen since the sixteenth century, and was a Catholic one. Another link was the version that told a story of the fight for the independence of the country and the preservation of its law and constitution, in a Protestant fashion. Again, the dynastic and later national reframing of symbolic systems influenced the religious ceremony. In the early nineteenth century, the ceremony was linked with the self-representation of the dynasty and the state. At least since 1860, it was visibly loaded with national sentiment and symbolism. Within the framework of a national thought that became a powerful means of orientation in the nineteenth century, both Catholicism and Protestantism integrated national motifs into religious thought, and both borrowed from the aura that national ideas bestowed at that time. But each referred to slightly differing interpretations of the nation and of group identity that were linked with the earlier frameworks of competing denominational and national historical narratives. This also refers to the way St Stephen was presented by each side. He remained a figure of the national past, which was not interpreted unanimously. That is why a state holiday on the name day of the saint was not a suitable way to mediate the tensions between the many ethnic and religious groups in the country. After Trianon, the continuously celebrated holiday, moreover, referred to the entirety of the lost territory of the crown of St Stephen.

The Cult of St Stephen 77

In the Communist era, the ideological as well as the pragmatic hostility towards religion and the churches resulted in the disappearance of the procession from the public space and the elimination of his holiday from the official calendar. The Communist narrative of the national history was based on the version linked to the fight for national independence and, within the framework of the class struggle and social progress, the historical figure of king Stephen became marginalized. The new version of the system of state holidays had a non-religious and a-national character. Later during the Kádár era, the historical figure of King Stephen proved its capacity to be integrated in the official concept of state and the reason of state. Even so, the attempt to reorganize collective memory by an official interpretation of history and an official commemoration of historical events in a new ideological framework could not abolish older patterns of interpretation and older elements of historical narratives. One reason was that the official concept was in contradiction with the heterogeneity of individual experiences that members of that society possess. This was the basis for the survival of older patterns of interpreting history. When the rock opera about King Stephen was first staged in 1983, these could be used for different readings of that work of art, to which the complexity of the opera gave many starting points. A conformist reading could regard the opera as an apotheosis of the reason of state and of sacrifices made in the service of progress; on the other hand, many elements of the opera, especially the ambivalence of the use of musical means within the framework of a modern listening experience, allowed one to understand the opera as a story about a great and tragic national past, at least as a story of progress and a story of loss. The simultaneous character of the respective contextual patterns enhanced this multitude of interpretations. The official cultural policy, seeking to give itself a liberal look, made such a play with multiple interpretations especially fascinating. The ambivalences inscribed into the work of art itself and the starting point for different readings are the basis for the continued success of the opera and its place in new political contexts of presentation and interpretation.

Notes 1 Pierre Nora, Les lieus de mémoire. Sous la direction de Pierre Nora, 1. La République; 2. La Nation; 3. Les Frances (Paris: Gallimard, 1984–92). 2 Jörn Rüsen, ‘What is Historical Consciousness? – A Theoretical Approach to Empirical Evidence’. Paper presented at the conference Canadian Historical Consciousness in an International Context: Theoretical Frameworks, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, 2001, see http://www.cshc.ubc.ca/pwias/ viewpaper.php?8. 3 Gábor Gyáni even observes a ‘wave’ of canonizations inspired by Ladislas I: ‘In fact, in 1083 a “wave” of canonizations swept Hungary, as, beside Stephen, his son Imre and Bishop Gellért were also canonized.’ Gábor Gyáni, ‘Kommemoratív emlékezet és történelmi igazolás’, in László Veszprémy, ed., Szent István és az

78 The Legacy of the National State

4

5

6

7

8

9 10 11

államalapítás (Budapest: Osiris, 2002) pp. 569–82. On the process of canonization see Gábor Klaniczay, Az uralkodók szentsége a középkorban. Magyar dinasztikus szentkultuszok és európai modellek (Budapest: Balassi, 2000), pp. 114–222. For further material on the background of the canonization see László Veszprémy, ‘Szent István korának válogatott történeti bibligráfiája’, in Veszprémy, Szent István, pp. 583–14, and esp. pp. 595 and 597–600. In the view of Sándor Bálint, only the forceful political changes of the twentieth century began to destroy this unity. Even if one doubts this image of peaceful religious folk life from the eighteenth until the twentieth century, it is probably correct for the huge majority of the Roman Catholic and even the Orthodox population of the country, even when it puts religious conflict, both on the political level as well as on the local level, in brackets. (Sándor Bálint and Gábor Barna, Búcsújáró magyarok. A magyarországi búcsújárás története és néprajza (Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 1994), p. 117; see also Sándor Bálint, Sacra Hungaria. Tanulmányok a vallásos népélet körébol (Budapest: Veritas, 1943). See Bálint and Barna, Búcsújáró magyarok, and Gábor Tüskés and Éva Knapp, Volksfrömmigkeit in Ungarn. Beiträge zur vergleichenden Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte (Dettelbach: Röll, 1996). In general, see note 4. The differing practice in various regions was for instance made clear in a report Joseph II had prepared for his Patent of Toleration. Elemér Mályusz, A türelmi rendelet. II. József és a magyar protestantizmus (Budapest: Magyar Protestáns Irodalmi Társaság, 1939); and esp. the relevant sources in Elemér Mályusz, Iratok a türelmi rendelet történetéhez. Edited and annotated by E. Mályusz (Budapest: Magyar Protestáns Irodalmi Társaság, 1940). A good overview of the whole process, including issues of religion and their interconnection with other conflicts, is given by László Kontler, Millennium in Central Europe. A History of Hungary (Budapest: Atlantisz Publishing House, 1999). On the reformation in Hungary: Alexander Sándor Unghváry, The Hungarian Reformation in the Sixteenth Century Under the Ottoman Impact. Essays and Profiles (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989); and Graeme Murdock, Calvinism on the frontier. 1600–1660. International Calvinism and the Reformed Church in Hungary and Transylvania (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). For more detail on laws concerning religion, see Mihály Zsilinszky, A magyar országgyülések vallásügyi tárgyalásai, vols 1–4 (Budapest, 1881–97). I. 1523–1608 (Budapest: Franklin, 1881); 2. 1608–1647 (Budapest: Hornyánszky, 1891); 3. 1647–1687 (Budapest: Hornyánszky, 1893); 4. 1687–1712 (Budapest: Hornyánszky, 1897). A shorter account of the development of Hungarian Protestantism is given by Mihály Bucsay, Der Protestantismus in Ungarn 1521–1978. I–II (Vienna: Böhlau, I. 1977; II. 1979). Juliane Brandt, ‘Verfolgung, Minderheitsposition und die langfristige Formulierung konfessioneller Identität – Thesen am Beispiel der ungarischen Protestanten’, in Joachim Bahlcke, ed., Glaubensflüchtlinge. Ursachen und Auswirkungen religiöser Migration im frühneuzeitlichen Europa (Stuttgart: Steiner, 2007 (forthcoming)) and Juliane Brandt, ‘Die ungarischen Protestanten und das Millennium. Nationale und konfessionelle Identität bei Reformierten und Evangelischen im Spiegel der Tausendjahr-Feiern der Landnahme’, in Jahrbücher zur Geschichte und Kultur Südosteuropas, 1 (1999), 57–93. Today, the church is called ‘Mathias Church’, and is the centre of a tourist cult. See Bálint and Barna, Búcsújáró magyarok, p. 326. Katalin Sinkó, ‘Zur Entstehung der staatlichen und nationalen Feuertage in Ungarn (1850–1991)’, in Emil Brix and Hannes Stekl, eds, Der Kampf um das Gedächtnis.

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12

13

14

15 16 17

18

19 20

21

22

Öffentliche Gedenktage in Mitteleuropa (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997), pp. 251–71. For more detail on literary cults in Hungary and their cultural and historical context, see Zsuzsa Kalla, ed., Kegyelet és irodalom (Reverence and literature) (Budapest: Petofi Irodalmi Múzeum, 1997); and Zsuzsa Kalla, ed., Az irodalom ünnepei. Kultusztörténeti tanulmányok (Budapest: Agroinform, 2000). Even Calvinist and Lutheran ministers did so, obviously referring to linguistic usage. Living before the Reformation and promoting the successful development of his kingdom, Stephen, as well as several other rulers of the Árpád dynasty, could well be integrated into the Protestant narrative of national history. Brandt, ‘Die ungarischen Protestanten’, and ‘Die Würdigung des Großen Toten: Lajos Kossuth in der protestantischen Presse und in Gelegenheitspublikationen der Jahrhundertwende’, Berliner Beiträge zur Hungarologie 9 (1996), 63–111. Coronation articles; esp. §12; see Corpus Iuris Hungarici (CIH), or, as in the cases already mentioned: Zsilinszky, A magyar országgyu´´lések; also Mihály Zsilinszky, A Linczi békekötés és az 1647-ki vallásügyi törvényczikkek története (Budapest: Hornyánszky, 1890). As an illustration of that emblematic range of personalities, see József S. Szabó et al., A protestantizmus Magyarországon (Budapest: Bethlen Gábor Szövetség, 1928), pp. 73–83, on modern writers, p. 82. As understood by Luhmann (Niclas Luhmann, Funktion der Religion (1977). 3rd edn (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1992), esp. pp. 225–71). After guaranteeing them equal civil and political rights in Art. 17/1867, the Jews were given a position equal to other religious groups with Art. 42/1895. These are figures for 1910. If we add Greek Catholics – about 11 per cent in the overall population, but only 3 per cent among Magyars – about 60 per cent of the overall population and about 62 per cent of Magyars were followers of the Roman Catholic Church. (Magyar Statistikai Közlemények; 61, 15. táblázat, ‘A jelenlevo ´´ népesség anyanyelve’; Tab. 22, ‘A jelenlevo ´´ népesség anyanyelve összevetve a vallással’). As Hungary’s Regent Miklós Horthy (by denomination a Calvinist) expressed it in 1938: ‘Also today, St Stephen’s blessed right gives guidance on the nation’s thousand-year-long way. And if we, the respectful descendants, want to pay tribute to his blessed and wise guiding spirit, we can only do this in a way worthy of our ancestors and ourselves by a solemn promise to use all our abilities and united power to gain back the former glory of St Stephen’s country . . .’ (‘Horthy Miklós kormányzó Szent István napi beszéde’) in Szent István és az államalapítás, pp. 541–2. For details see Kontler for an instructive analytic overview; see, moreover, George Schöpflin, Politics in Eastern Europe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 57–74. For example Történelemtanárok munkaközessége, Törénelem az általános iskola 6. osztálya számára, pp. 27–31, but: Árpád Balla, Történelem és állampolgári ismeretek az általános iskola 6. osztálya számára (Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1981), pp. 84–8; or Béla Bellér, Történelem 1. Történelem a dolgozók középiskolai I. osztálya számára (Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1982), pp. 265–74. See Árpád v. Klimó, ‘The King’s Right Hand. A Religious Relic and the Conflict between the Communist Party and the Catholic Church in Hungary (1945–48)’, in Karin Friedrich, ed., Festive Culture in Germany and Europe (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000), pp. 343–62. Works such as Aladár Mód, 400 év küzdelem az önálló Magyarországért (Budapest: Szikra, 1943); 3rd edn (Budapest: Szikra, 1947) illustrate this line of thought.

80 The Legacy of the National State 23 György Gyarmati, Március hatalma – a hatalom márciusa. Fejezetek március 15. ünneplésének történetébol (Budapest: Paginarum, 1998). 24 Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis (München: Beck, 1997), pp. 34–66. 25 Ibid., pp. 50–53 and 54. 26 Hartmut Lehmann, ‘Von der Erforschung der Säkularisierung zur Erforschung von Prozessen der Dechristianisierung und der Rechristianisierung im neuzeitlichen Europa’, in Hartmut Lehmann, ed., Säkularisierung, Dechristianisierung, Rechristianisierung im neuzeitlichen Europa. Bilanz und Perspektiven der Forschung (Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 1997), pp. 9–16. 27 For instance one resembles the monastery of Ják. 28 Emericus (Zoltán Krasznai), ‘János a király, avagy árad a kegyelem fénye rank’, Hírmondó 5 (1984), 5, newly edited in Szamizdat 81–89. Válogatás a Hírmondó címu´´ folyóiratból (Samizadt 1981–89. A Selection from the Journal ‘Newsteller’) (Budapest: AB–Beszélo, 1990), pp. 86–91. 29 Ibid., pp. 86 and 88. 30 Ibid., p. 88. 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid., p. 89. 33 ‘Most már elég, túl sok itt az//ártalmas emlékezés//Ho ´´si múlttal együtt jár az// árulás és zendülés.//Barbár dallam, pogány ének.//ízléstelen nem vitás.//Fogjátok meg mind a kettot//nem turöm a lázítást!’ (The Hungarian text is available on the Internet at several sites, for instance at www.zikkurat.hu, a theatre agency’s website.) (Translation by the author) 34 This interpretation would thus hint at post-1956 emigration from Hungary, a way that many intellectuals, writers and artists chose. 35 Beside the story itself, this ‘national’ reading can also refer to the explicit statements on the message of the film: another hint in the introductory text points to the survival of Hungarians as speakers of Hungarian and inhabitants of their own state because of Stephen’s decisions. 36 Emericus, ‘János a király’, p. 90. 37 The textbook entries and the credit titles call them ‘aristocrats’ (fourak), but in their appearance they rather resemble ‘everybody’, three men of a medium position somewhere in society. They sing: ‘Man is mean (. . .) he always follows the one who promises more (. . .)’. (Translation by the author) 38 In more detail: ‘I brought a bloody sword,//the bloody sword of our ancestors,// the people is ready for the decisive battle.//We defend our independence//and withstand Stephen,//we don’t need a pale god.//Árpád’s free people is of the blood of conquerors,//and doesn’t tolerate the foreign bridle.//Our dreams become true,// or we all get lost,//but rather death, than slavery (szolgaság).//Koppány, when you defeat Stephen//, our heroes will not perish in times to come (majd).//The people here will be powerful//from Rome till the Greek Byzantium,//from the Rhine till Levedia//will they fear the name of your descendants.//We will win at Mohács// György Dózsa will become our king.//We become a great power over centuries.// Rákóczi will conquer the world//with Kossuth becomes true//the Republic of the Carpathian basin.//’ (Translation by the author) 39 In more detail, and analysing the differences concerning interpretation of history and artistic solutions, see Noemi Kertész, ‘Attila és az egységes Európa’, U´ j Holnap 43 (1998), 129–37.

5 The Quest for a Symbol – Wenceslas and the Czech State Stefan Samerski

Few states can look back on a continuity of such personified state symbolism as the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, now the Czech Republic: Wenceslas (Václav/Wenzel) was looked upon since the eleventh century as protectorin-battle, an eternal ruler, and a symbol of the Bohemian state.1 The Bohemian prince Wenceslas urged the spreading of the Christian faith in the tenth century and defended his country against invasions by the Bavarians in 922.2 He became a martyr on 28 September 929 (or 935), when he was slain in a clash with his conspiring brother Boleslav at Stará Boleslav (Altbunzlau). In the background of this bloody conflict apparently stood both the forced conversion to Christianity and Wenceslas’s readiness to submit to the rule of the Saxon kings in 929, paying a tribute of 500 pounds in silver and 120 oxen. It is the fratricidal Boleslav, who successfully ruled the country for over 30 years, who went down in history as the real founder of the state. Historically, Wenceslas can only boast of having converted to Christianity nothing more than his small territory, and of a limited knowledge of Latin. But ever since the tenth century, he has been venerated as a martyr and, as early as the tenth and eleventh centuries, he has been revered as a most powerful ruler. His vita was first written in the tenth century both in Old Church Slavonic and Latin (commissioned by Emperor Otto II). Although there is little historical evidence to support this joined Slav and German tradition of worship, Wenceslas’s cult continued unbroken until after 1945. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the fate of Wenceslas as a symbol of the Czech state.

The making of a cult German settlers started coming to Bohemia in small groups in the tenth century – merchants went to Prague, priests arrived with the progress of the faith, and there was also intermarriage in the ranks of the nobility. The search for a symbol seems to have been present since medieval times, thereby stylizing 81

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Wenceslas as a state symbol; in its full boom, this symbolism is documented from Charles IV onward. Therefore, Wenceslas belongs to that group of princely or royal saints, who – like István of Hungary (1000–1038), Olaf of Norway (1015–30), and Eric of Sweden (1150–60) – started or encouraged the progress of Christianity in their countries, had churches and monasteries built, and worked together with the local clergy.3 Three of them died violently because of their Christian faith and were soon venerated as patrons of their country. Stará Boleslav, where Wenceslas was martyred, became a national place of worship and his tomb on the Hradcin further enhanced the religious and political importance of Prague. He was, like István, Olaf and Eric, a figure on whom ‘national’ identity was conferred because of their autochthonous princely birth. It was exactly these ingredients of the aristocrat–saint and the ideal of chivalry that secured the continuation of his outstanding cult over the centuries. Bohemia was not a politically and ethnically homogeneous country that was trying to maintain its sovereignty, but there was one very popular element in the Middle Ages that strengthened his cult: working miracles. Cosmas of Prague had already noted this in 1120.4 In fact, Wenceslas surpassed the other two – partly earlier – patron saints of Bohemia, Vitus and Adalbert, who lacked a thaumaturgical quality equalling that of Wenceslas. Hence the latter became a popular saint. Since the eleventh century, he was remembered as a state patron of the type of ‘Eternal Ruler’, who transferred his power to the ruling monarch, and also as patron of the ‘Primates Bohemienses’, the political and social elite of the country. In the high and late Middle Ages, he was still leading the group of the – by now – six Bohemian patron saints, but he also had to accept certain losses.5 As a state saint, he bore the state symbol, so the crown jewels were entrusted to him. In 1346, Charles IV expressed his wish to have the crown placed on the saint’s reliquary skull and he obtained a corresponding papal bull. The king ‘borrowed’ the crown only on festive occasions.6 In view of his relation to the ruling monarch, Wenceslas’s veneration spread beyond Prague, and he was raised in rank, becoming the main patron of Olomouc Cathedral.7 In the late Middle Ages, the veneration of Wenceslas passed through a phase of opposition to the king and the German urban patricians. As a result, the saint became the patron of the peoples of the Bohemian Lands and his cult managed to survive the Hussite and Reformation periods.8

The state patron in the era of confessionalism His multiple patronage – as a symbol of the state, of the country and of sovereignty – allowed both parties during the Hussite wars to appeal to Wenceslas. The Catholics invoked him to help them, before Almighty God, to root out heresy; the Utraquists called him their prince, protector and patron. Thus Wenceslas’s image appeared on the Hussite shields underneath the chalice

Wenceslas and the Czech State 83

and, while entering the battle against the Catholics, they sang the medieval St Wenceslas Chorale (‘Svatý Václave’), even though the Hussites had abolished the cult of saints.9 In the sixteenth century, Wenceslas was also a symbolic figure which, as the country’s patron, conferred identity on both Lutherans and the Bohemian Brethren.10 In contrast to St Adalbert, Wenceslas’s veneration persisted through the religious wars but diminished when compared to the late Middle Ages.11 Apart from the relevance of his cult for state politics, it is his eminence in the people’s veneration and prayer that may have kept this cult alive during the religious wars. The richly illustrated Wenceslas Codex, dedicated by Matthias Hutsky12 of Pürglitz in 1585 to Archduke Ferdinand II of Tyrol (1529–95), Lieutenant of Bohemia,13 illustrates the political and confessional importance of this princely saint. Under the very first picture, the text reads: ‘As soon as St. Wenceslas ascended the throne, he made great efforts to restore and strengthen the growth of good religion, which had been thwarted by the heathen mother and impious brother.’14 These lines suggest the influence of the Jesuits: Wenceslas is reported to have sent priests to teach manners and culture to the people in the churches and to the pupils in the schools.15 In various comments, the motive of an exemplary ‘new piety’ is intimated as well as the defence and spreading of Christian teaching, by force if necessary. Two pictures give a hint of the transubstantiation of the Blessed Sacrament, which means that Wenceslas cared for wheat plantations and a bakery for hosts.16 Communion is called the ‘Holiest of Sacraments’ and later on it is described as bread that had been transformed into the Lord’s flesh, the ‘Corpus Christi’, by secret words and mystic consecration as well as by the descent of the Holy Spirit. Here you have a good example of a typical Counter-Reformation idea expressed in a commented picture! After the battle of White Mountain in 1620 and the spreading of CounterReformation in the Bohemian Lands under the Habsburgs, Wenceslas’s cult experienced a new development and a changed status. This was brought about by the ruling dynasty and various religious orders. The Friars of St Augustine Eremites in the ‘New City’ of Prague ordered a series of 32 paintings portraying Wenceslas’s vita. In addition, a most impressive via sacra comprising of 44 chapels with themes from Wenceslas’s legend and the life of the Virgin was built between Prague and Stará Boleslav, representing the typical CounterReformation symbiosis of the two cults.17 Between 1679 and 1690, three booklets containing copper prints illustrating Wenceslas’s legend were published in different languages. There was a vita written in German in 1644. The vera effigies of the saint were adored in various churches in Prague. Wenceslas’s cult was promoted by secular priests as well as by regulars.18 During the years 1670 and 1729 it seems that the Jesuits tried to bring the cult of St Wenceslas closer to the Czech population: among other things, they also educated Czechspeaking priests in their ‘St Wenceslas College’ to promote this objective.19 For example, Josef Balbín S.J. ended his dissertation in 1775 with a prayer in Czech: ‘You are the foremost Protector of the country of Bohemia . . . , give

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back the long lost glory to your Czechs!’ This was a legitimate request, as the crown of Wenceslas – a legal entity of the Bohemian Lands since the Middle Ages – was kept abroad, in Vienna, since Maria Theresa’s coronation in 1740. After the death of Joseph II in 1790, the Bohemian Lands asked for it to be returned. The crown was received in Prague with frenetic applause.20 But during the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, the crown jewels were once again deposited in Vienna and only returned to the Hradc in a year later, this time with big religious, state and military pomp. This was the time of the constitutional debates, when the crown came to symbolize Bohemian state law; this remained so until the Second World War.21

The nineteenth and twentieth centuries It was due to his close ties with the Bohemian state that Wenceslas could preserve his relevance to both parts of the population, Czech and German. However, with the Czechs, Jan Hus became even more popular in the nineteenth century, because he was regarded as the personification of opposition to the Germans. Anti-Habsburg elements also entered into the cult of Wenceslas. In November 1848, a mass was celebrated on Wenceslas Square, next to his statue, and this marked the beginning of the revolts. Ever since, Wenceslas’s Square has been the place for political demonstrations underlining the national myth – the continuity of the Bohemian crown and the country’s sovereignty.22 Christian symbolism was taken away in 1902, when a new statue of Wenceslas was erected: instead of the flag with a cross, the prince carries a simple banner. The Middle Ages and the baroque era messages are still present, but the artist subjected them to a political programme: secular legitimacy is no longer a copy of the divine order.23 Habsburg rule caused the rise of national tendencies in the nineteenth century and also during the First World War: the Viennese government banned the singing of the medieval St Wenceslas’s Chorale because the imperial government perceived it as a manifestation of national protest. Not surprisingly, Wenceslas was designated the State Patron of the First Czechoslovak Republic  SR). The first and only gold coin produced in 1923 showed the image of (C St Wenceslas, thus embodying the beginnings of Bohemian statehood. The First  SR stood for liberalism, laicity, and also in opposition to Habsburg-backed C Roman Catholicism. In 1929, the Social Democrats opposed Wenceslas as a symbol of national identity because his cult also intimated Roman Catholicism, foreign (Habsburg) domination, and the lack of progressive thinking.24 On the other hand, the Catholic Church preserved his tradition without any modifications well past 1990, as it sought to oppose the secularization of the country and society.25 The late 1920s saw many economic and political accomplishments in the young republic, which had also achieved a modus vivendi with the Catholic Church by paying more attention to the Catholics in Moravia and Slovakia,

Wenceslas and the Czech State 85

and the Germans living in the border regions. The extreme nationalism and anti-Catholicism of the first years came to an end. The celebration of the millennium of the state was also an occasion to celebrate the cult of St Wenceslas in a wider context, surpassing in splendour the festivities for Jan Hus in 1925.26 The celebrations began at the end of September 1928 – to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the republic. After that, the just-completed St Vitus Cathedral (the costly works had been financed mostly by the state) was inaugurated with a celebration in honour of St Wenceslas. The exhibition of the crown jewels also brought to the Hradcin masses of people from all social strata.27 The exhibition had been planned by the state as a cultural and political event celebrating itself, but, given the background of the tradition, the population regarded it as a religious procession. It was praised even in the press because of the religious atmosphere in which the state insignia was presented. The public interest was overwhelming: over 750,000 people participated in the procession that brought back the skull reliquary to the Cathedral on 29 October. But this is not to be regarded as a religious comeback. President Tomáš G. Masaryk gave an example of unusual moderation when he mentioned the special relationship between church and state.28 In his speech on St Wenceslas Day, he intentionally ignored national options, pointing out the saint’s humanity and the written tradition; he added: ‘a nation’s healthy national life is based on education and manners’.29 Apart from the religious issue, the state claimed for itself all the other elements present in the medieval cult of St. Wenceslas: the eternal ruler Wenceslas as a symbol of statehood, the identity of the Bohemian Lands, and Bohemia’s continuous political tradition up to the First Republic. In 1929, St Wenceslas was still a figure unifying Czechs and Germans. Ten years later, the situation had changed drastically. In March 1939, German troops occupied Bohemia. There was a spontaneous gathering of the people of Prague who came to Wenceslas Square in silent protest, reminiscent of 1918, when the republican state was founded. Thus Wenceslas Square finally established itself as the proper place for hoisting the flag of national identity and self-assertion, and equally, the St Wenceslas Chorale became a way of expressing ‘silent’ protest. The Germans did not fail to instrumentalize Wenceslas for their own needs, pointing out that the Czechs had pledged submission to the Germans by paying a tribute (500 pounds in silver, 120 oxen), as written in the saint’s vita. The crown was taken away from its depository in St Vitus Cathedral and brought to Count Sobeslav’s castle. This meant the secularization of the crown jewels, preceding their transport abroad, thus pointing to the diminished national identity of the Czechs. After the war, the crown was brought back to its former depository in St Vitus Cathedral, having first been presented to a more than pleased public on National Day on 28 September 1945.30 On the same day the whole country celebrated, together with the US forces present, the liberation of Czechoslovakia. This was done with great pomp, including church symbolism: for example,  eský Krumlov (Böhmisch Krumau), the bells tolled for half an hour the in C

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night before and a mass was celebrated. In Prague, the faithful went from their local churches to Wenceslas Square singing the St Wenceslas Chorale, and here the commanders of both the Czechoslovak and the US armies spoke. On the next day there were military parades followed by mass in St Wenceslas Church commemorating the war dead.31 During the Communist period, Wenceslas was removed from the public political sphere. The religious and moral aspects of his cult remained relevant only for the Church, and for the Czech political and social elites he was nothing more than an anti-German state symbol. For example, the expulsion of the Germans after 1945 was taken up by the newly founded satirical journal Dikobraz (Porcupine) in a cartoon showing them as they pass the frontiers together with a tribute of 500 pounds in silver and 120 oxen – exactly the tribute Wenceslas had paid to the Saxon king Heinrich I in 929.32 Past history was dealt with vindictively in this period. Nevertheless, for reasons of legitimacy, the state still wished to make use of the political state symbolism in the Wenceslas myth and therefore exhibited the crown jewels thrice to the public, also reminding it that it was impossible to view them in their depository in St Vitus through all the nineteenth century. The crown was shown at the Communist Party Congress in 1955; there was an exhibition of archival documents in the Hradcin in 1958 and another one dedicated to Emperor Charles IV in 1978. The crown was the object of highest interest in each of these manifestations, illustrating people’s respect in front of the symbol of state sovereignty.33

Wenceslas in the post-Communist period After the fall of Communism, known as the ‘velvet’ revolution, which included public demonstrations on Wenceslas Square in November 1989 – similar to the ‘Prague Spring’ in 1968 – the most prominent patron of the country experienced a tentative renaissance. Once again, political self-assertion and historical consciousness joined in a symbiosis, similar to the situation in the  SR. But it took some time for Wenceslas to come back as a patron of First C the state. Some elements in his myth had to be rectified, for example his sympathy for the Germans, or the Catholic religious component. In this respect, it was noticed that the President of Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel, on the way to taking office in 1989, was seen to take the path of the medieval Bohemian kings en route to their coronation ceremony in St Vitus Cathedral. In 2000, Petr Pithart, President of the Senate, called Wenceslas Square ‘a magnet which attracts us to the patron of the country, he, who unites and unifies us, who from time to time gives us a still existing “we” feeling’.34 Nevertheless, soon after 1989, it was the commemoration of Jan Hus’s death that was introduced as the first new national holiday. A proposal made by the Czechoslovak Hussite Church (THK) in April 1990 suggested that the Hussite, that is to say the Czech, reform should be a part of national tradition and statehood. Hus was called one of the greatest figures of the country and the

Wenceslas and the Czech State 87

embodiment of its moral and religious heritage; for this reason he was needed in order to renew state awareness.35 July 6 was proclaimed a national holiday the same year, and two years later, the Bethlehem Chapel in Prague, where Hus had been preaching, was reopened after 200 years.36 In 2005, Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, clearly underlined Jan Hus’s role in marshalling identity: ‘Hus more than most of the others had managed to influence our spiritual life and consciousness as a nation. . . . His struggle for truth is well known to everybody, and he had always been a good example to the others.’37 The main goals of the new state were political stability and cultural reform. In 1993, the rupture between the Czech and the Slovak parts of the Republic had shown what a failure post-socialist Czechoslovakia had been. But even after this event, it seemed that Czech statehood and society still appeared to be lacking in homogeneity. The Catholic Church had diminished in importance, especially after suffering a tremendous setback to secularization, mainly under Communism, with the result that the Czech Republic became one of the most de-Christianized countries in Europe: only approximately 26 per cent of the population still claim to profess the Catholic faith. Ever since 1918, successive governments have fought against Catholicism, especially Communist ones.38 Until 1989, the Catholic Church had been gaining prestige in society because of its consistent criticism of the regime, but afterwards any hope of re-establishing its past fame simply failed. It was unable to convince the Czech public after 1990 that its prime interest was not the restitution of property, but the establishment of a new legal framework on which to set up the relationship between church and state.39 In the 1990s, the double function of a religious and political centre in the construction of the Hradcin led to something like a ‘small cultural revolution’ between the government and the Church: in 1995, St Vitus Cathedral and some other important churches located on the Hradcin were returned to church ownership, having been in the state’s possession since 1954 as ‘national monuments’.40 It is interesting to note that only the Church maintained the veneration of Wenceslas through the centuries; after the political transition, it was the only institution that still celebrated Wenceslas Day.41 Seen from a Catholic point of view, he embodied martyrdom, was linked to the spread of the faith in Bohemia, and was the first Christian ruler committed to the Christian code of virtues. Nevertheless, at the turn of the millennium, a Catholic veneration of Wenceslas had become meaningless to a pluralist and secularized Czech society. Whereas the day commemorating Hus had been rather smoothly accepted as a state holiday, the situation was different with 28 September. Its introduction was discussed freely but it did stir political emotions in society at large towards the end of the 1990s. Politicians could not agree whether to honour Wenceslas as the founder of the state or to ban him as a German collaborator.42 The left thought that a return of 28 September might revalorize and strengthen Catholic positions in the country.43 Miloš Zeman, the late Czech prime minister, called him a traitor who voluntarily paid allegiance to Heinrich I by

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paying a tribute: ‘If 28 September was to become a national holiday, this would not enhance Czech statehood, but servility and collaboration!’ But Zeman lost the debate and his argument was rejected in an emotionally conducted session in Parliament. In 2000, Wenceslas Day was reclaimed as a state holiday, more accurately as the day of Czech statehood. In this way, the secularization of the saint had come full circle. There was no sacral depreciation of Wenceslas by storing his insignia inaccessible to the public in the same depository in St Vitus, where they had been in the nineteenth century. It was the state, and not the saint and martyr, that ended up de-Christianized. Tradition, as well as the search for a symbol, was ultimately decisive for reintroducing Wenceslas Day as a national holiday, even though there were doubts about this in all social groups, except the Catholic Church and the Sudeten Germans who still venerate him as a symbol of identity. The Czech historian Dušan Treštík argues that returning to the commemoration of the supposed founder of the state represents a public demonstration by many Czechs in times of political crisis, as well as a clear political message to the world.44 Lately, there have been additional signs to indicate the revalorization of Wenceslas: St Vitus Cathedral is now called ‘Vitus, Adalbert, and Wenceslas Cathedral’. Apart from the one in Stará Boleslav, this cathedral is the centre of the cult for most of the Bohemian state patrons. Wenceslas today seems more popular with the Czech social and religious elites than ever, conferring a sense of orientation and identity in both a religious as well as in a political setting. The name of ‘Václav’ is currently in eleventh position among Christian names for boys in the Czech Republic.45 Nevertheless, doubts still linger, due primarily to the fact that all social groups ever connected to the Bohemian Lands still regard Wenceslas as a figure giving identity. Cults of some other state patrons reaching back to the Middle Ages are available, but in the post-Communist era they were pushed to the edges of society, except in the Church. Apart from this ambiguity, it seems that with Wenceslas the decisive criterion is exactly the quest for a unifying symbol and it is because of this that he was reinstated as a state symbol, albeit to the detriment of his religious component. There are a numSR. ber of parallels to be found with the First C On the other hand, there are dangers of acting by government decree that must be taken into account: the state depends on specific social groups as well as the churches whenever it wishes to convey certain values to society. Thus the cult of Wenceslas already experiences outside the religious sphere a certain cultural erosion. According to polls taken in 2004, most people did not know why 28 September is a state holiday, other than as a day that prolongs a weekend.46

Conclusion Wenceslas has been since medieval times the uncontested symbol of the Bohemian state. As patron of the country, he had a number of ‘rivals’ ever since

Wenceslas and the Czech State 89

the high Middle Ages, but he always imposed himself as the embodiment of the concept of state and national sovereignty. Charles IV transformed Wenceslas’s cult into a state cult by enhancing the sacredness of the crown insignia. Since the eighteenth century, Wenceslas came to be more closely linked to the Czech part of Bohemia’s heterogeneous society, and this is why the Habsburgs prohibited manifestations of the cult of Wenceslas towards the end of their reign in the Bohemian Lands. As a result, he experienced a somewhat delayed  SR because of his close connection to the Catholic renaissance in the First C Church, once a pillar of the state. The German occupation as well as the Communist period made use of Wenceslas for their own ends, regardless of his popularity. At that time, his veneration as a state symbol had already made such progress that he would fit in wherever needed – a result of the longevity of his legend.  SR. In both Post-Communism offers many parallels to the era of the First C cases, the government was sceptical with regard to Wenceslas’s religious links and decisions were delayed. After the post-Communist transition, the Catholic Church suffered a social setback, which explains why Wenceslas Day became a secular state holiday only in 2000. In the most unreligious European society, this was done by taking a religious symbol and stripping it of its religious content. But, as in medieval and early modern times, Wenceslas still carried the idea of state and independence with him, and has remained a national symbol conveying identity in a pluralist society. Czech legislators totally ignored the fact that Wenceslas also stands for certain moral values and religious affirmation. His veneration by the Sudeten Germans is also an obstacle for his cult in the Czech Republic, with the exception of the Catholic Church. Historical debates on this topic are, however, useless: he is neither the real political founder of the state, nor had he ever stood for a specific orientation of the Church, to the West or to the East, and he also does not belong specifically to any of the ethnically defined parties. All these elements taken together make him a unifying figure, even though he is still not undisputed in the Czech Republic. If the symbol is not well received by the people and if the people have to adjust the symbol in the same way as the Hussites took over a saint, as lay liberals took over a martyr and promoter of the faith, as the Slavs adopted a saint who was a friend of the Germans, and as medieval knights adored a weak ruler, then a modern state is justified in making use of a figure that had been venerated uninterruptedly by the Church. What this means is that tradition stands for helplessness in the face of uncertainty or pending danger.

Notes 1 For the worship of Wenceslas in the Middle Ages see Frantisek Graus, Lebendige Vergangenheit. Überlieferung im Mittelalter und in der Vorstellung vom Mittelalter (Cologne/Vienna: Böhlau, 1975), pp. 145–58; Frantisek, Graus, ‘St. Adalbert und St. Wenzel. Zur Funktion der mittelalterlichen Heiligenverehrung in Böhmen’, in

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2

3

4 5

6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

20 21 22

23 24 25 26

Klaus-Deltlev Grothusen and Klaus Zernack, eds, Europa Slavica – Europa Orientalis. Festschrift für Herbert Ludat zum 70. Geburtstag (Berlin: Aufbau, 1980), pp. 205–31; F. and M. Machilek, ‘Der heilige Wenzel: Kult und Ikonographie’, in Alfried Wieczorek and Hans-Martin Hinz, eds, Europas Mitte um 1000. Beiträge zur Geschichte, Kunst und Archäologie, vol. 2 (Stuttgart: Theiss, 1980), pp. 888–94. See his Vita: Dušan Treštík: Pocátky Premyslovcu (The Beginnings of the Premyslides) (Prague: Polygrafia 1997); M. Bláhová: ‘Wenzel’, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 8 (Stuttgart/Weimar: Metzler, 1999), pp. 2185–7. J. Petersohn, ‘Politik und Heiligenverehrung im Hochmittelalter’, in Vorträge und Forschungen des Konstanzer Arbeitskreises für mittelalterliche Geschichte, vol. 62 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1992). Cosmas von Prag, Die Chronik Böhmens, vol. 1, ed. Alexander Heine (Essen/Stuttgart: Phaidon, 1987), p. 80. Gábor Klaniczay, The Uses of Supernatural Powers. The Transformation of Popular Religion in Medieval and Early-Modern Europe (Princeton, NJ. University Press, 1990), pp. 121–22. Their number and persons are not to be regarded as canonically approved. In some medieval martyrologies other feast days for Wenceslas and Adalbert are reported, Vitus, Cyril and Method, Procopius, Ludmilla, the Five Brethren and Sigismund being added. See Graus, ‘St. Adalbert und St. Wenzel’, p. 216. Karl Schwarzenberg, Die Sankt Wenzels-Krone (Vienna/Munich: Herold, 1982), p. 19. Graus, Lebendige Vergangenheit,. p. 169. Ibid., pp. 174–6; Graus, ‘St. Adalbert und St. Wenzel’, pp. 218–19. E. Petru, ‘The Legends and Cult of St Wenceslas’, in The Life and Martyrdom of Saint Wenceslas, Prince of Bohemia, in Historic Pictures (Prague: Polygrafia, 1997). J. Royt, ‘Die Verehrung der böhmischen Landespatrone im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’, in Ceské Nebe – Böhmischer Himmel. Andachtsbilder aus dem Kunstgewerbemuseum Prag (Neukirchen b. Hl. Blut: Perlinger Druck, 1995), p. 5. Graus, Lebendige Vergangenheit, p. 177. Karel Stejskal in The Life and Martyrdom of Saint Wenceslas. Son of Emperor Ferdinand I and Anna Jagiello and Lieutenant of Bohemia from 1547 to 1566. Figura 1 in The Life and Martyrdom of Saint Wenceslas. Ibid. Figura XI and XIII in The Life and Martyrdom of Saint Wenceslas. See Royt, ‘Die Verehrung’, p. 5; W. Hartinger, ‘Marien-, Wenzel- und Nepomukwallfahrten in Böhmen’, Jahrbuch für ostdeutsche Volkskunde 22 (1979), 37–8. Royt, ‘Die Verehrung’, p. 7. P. Rychterová, Mittelalterliche Hagiographie auf der Leinwand: Der Film Svatý Václav (1929) als gescheiterter Versuch, ein Nationaldenkmal zu erstellen (Caustance: Uni-Press, 2001), p. 4. Schwarzenberg, Die Sankt Wenzels-Krone, pp. 31–2. Ibid., p. 34. K. Kallert, ‘Landesheilige in Böhmen. Das Denkmal und die Denkmäler’, in Walter Koschmal, ed., Deutsche und Tschechen. Geschichte, Kultur, Politik (Munich: Beck, 2001), p. 164. Ibid., pp. 165–6. Ibid., p. 171. Ibid. C.J. Paces, Religious Images and National Symbols in the Creation of Czech Identity. PhD Dissertation, (New York: Columbia University, 1998).

Wenceslas and the Czech State 91 27 Ibid., pp. 298–310. 28 Ibid., p. 310. 29 Rychterová, Mittelalterliche Hagiographie, p. 1; Kallert, ‘Landesheilige in Böhmen’, p. 171. 30 Schwarzenberg, Die Sankt Wenzels-Krone, p. 36. 31 P. Jelínek, ‘St.-Wenzels-Tradition in Ceský Krumlov’, Infozentrum Ceský Krumlov, 4 September 2003. 32 P. Becher and J. Dzambo, eds, Gleiche Bilder, gleiche Worte. Deutsche, Österreicher und Tschechen in der Karikatur 1848–1948 (Munich: FIBO, 1997), p. 267. 33 Schwarzenberg, Die Sankt Wenzels-Krone, p. 36. 34 K. Bock, ‘Der Heilige Wenzel’, Czech Radio 7, Radio Prague, 28 September 2002. 35 Glaube in der 2. Welt, Zürich: 6, 1990, p. 12. 36 Glaube in der 2. Welt, Zürich: 7/8, 1994, p. 16. 37 B. Procházková, ‘Gleich drei Nationalpatrone auf einen Schlag’, Czech Radio 7, Radio Prague, 7 July 2005. 38 Glaube in der 2. Welt, Zürich: 4, 2005, p. 19. See the statement of an eyewitness: T. Halík, ‘Du wirst das Angesicht der Erde erneuern’, Kirche und Gesellschaft an der Schwelle zur Freiheit (Leipzig: Benno, 1990); O. Mádar, Wie Kirche nicht stirbt. Zeugnis aus bedrängten Zeiten der tschechischen Kirche (Leipzig: Benno, 1993). 39 See Glaube in der 2. Welt, Zürich: 4, 2004, pp. 16ff. 40 Glaube in der 2. Welt, Zürich: 1, 1995, p. 11. 41 R. Schuster, ‘Der Heilige Wenzel und die Wenzeltradition in der tschechischen Geschichte’, Czech Radio 7, Radio Prague, 28 September 2003. 42 Bock, ‘Der Heilige Wenzel’. 43 Schuster, ‘Der Heilige Wenzel’. 44 Ibid. 45 K. Bock, ‘Der heilige Vaclav und seine Namensvetter’, Czech Radio 7, Radio Prague, 25 September 2004. 46 R. Schuster, ‘Medienstimmen zum Auftritt des künftigen EU-Kommissars Spidla in Brüssel und zur Verleihung der Ehrenbürgerschaft an Otto von Habsburg’, Czech Radio 7, Radio Prague, 1 January 2004.

6 Moldavian Prince Stephen and Romania Krista Zach

In most South-East European countries, the institution of a patron saint has seen a revival in the post-Communist period. After 1990, representatives of medieval ‘national’ cultures formed the object of redefined cults, among them founding kings, martyrs, men of the church with outstanding reputation, and also popular heroes from national history. With the Romanians, as elsewhere, medieval patrons were usually saints and martyrs of the early church such as Nicholas, Andrew and George; national patron saints were the exception. In the Principality of Moldavia, the Greek neo-martyr John the New of Suceava was adopted by the ruling prince in 1415 as the country’s patron saint. A cult was created and reactivated several times from the fifteenth to the twentieth century. At the end of the last century, John was canonized properly, declared a pan-Romanian saint, but, in fact, lost his primary medieval functions as a patron and protector to far better-known, much more popular, heroes taken from national Romanian history. The purpose of this chapter is to examine why and how a medieval hero became a national symbol in post-Communist Romania.

The cult of medieval patrons in Romania The large majority of Romania’s citizens, namely 88 per cent, adhere today to the Greek Orthodox faith. Modern Romania is a construction of the nineteenth century, even if its history goes back to the fourteenth, when the two Romanian Principalities of Walachia and Moldavia were founded. In contrast to their Slavic neighbours – Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, or Serbs – the Romanians had neither ‘national’ saints nor patrons from their own ranks.1 Certain figures – martyrs venerated as ‘saints’ – such as John the New of Suceava, Paraskeva of Ias¸ i , or Philothea of Arges¸ , were imported from the Balkans. Yet none of these was canonized in accordance with Orthodox tradition, and the shrines with their relics were only known and worshipped locally.2 Nevertheless, John the New was proclaimed patron of Prince Alexander the Good’s capital Suceava in 1415 and was soon held to be the patron of the Principality of Moldavia. 92

Moldavian Prince Stephen and Romania 93

His reputation as state patron was discontinued and restored several times, the last time by Metropolitan Varlaam in the seventeenth century, and he was also remembered as patron of the Habsburg Bukovina with a local cult at his shrine.3 As far as Walachia is concerned, no martyr’s career as a state symbol matching that of John the New was ever reported. Alongside the discontinued line of martyrs as Romanian state symbols or patrons, there is another line that reflects secular state symbolism and civic initiative, the inspiration arising from patriotic and national feelings. In the nineteenth century, with the influx of the ideals of liberty, human rights and sovereignty, as well as Western culture and civilization, inspired by the French Revolution of 1789 and more particularly by that of 1848, Romanians looked back on their own history for symbols of nationhood and political independence. Ruling princes such as Stephen of Moldavia (1457–1504) and Michael of Walachia (1593–1601) were appropriate in this context and were also found making a lasting impression on the public. In a process that used a more or less inspired politically minded rhetoric, they became substitutes for the absent patron saints. The defining moment of this substitution took place in the nineteenth century, when Romania was in the process of becoming a nation-state and acquiring a monarch. The reception speeches for Prince Karl of HohenzollernSigmaringen after his arrival in Bucharest (he stayed on as the new Prince – Fürst) on 10 May 1866 used well-known political symbolic rhetoric – a mixture of national pathos and martial notes. The prince responded in kind, saying that, for him, Romania had become ‘sacred soil’ and he was ‘a Romanian’. He declared: ‘By setting foot on this sacred soil, I became Romanian.’4 The Mayor of Bucharest presented the foreign prince, who was to become the first king of Romania, with a symbolic ‘crown’; there was in fact no crown to present. He said: Sovereign of Romania! We hereby present to you the crown of our greatest ruling princes, the crown of Stephen the Great and the crown of Michael the Brave, whom you may regard as your ancestors from this day on. In return, we ask you to restore the former splendour to this crown! Transform this beautiful country into a bridgehead of modern liberties, a bulwark of Western civilization!5 However, the absence of religiously based state symbols or patrons was felt by the newly founded monarchy of Romania of 1881 and again after the ‘Great Unification’ that created Greater Romania in 1918–20. After 1881, when Romania’s Parliament proclaimed Romania to be a sovereign kingdom, and more so after 1925, when the national Orthodox Church declared itself autocephalous, scholars and men of the church took up the idea of creating ‘national’ Romanian saints of their own, as all the neighbouring states had done in the past, and some more recently.6

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Such attempts continued in the Communist and post-Communist period. An attempt at promoting Romanians as saints was made in 1955, when local patrons such as John the New of Suceava and Philothea of Arges¸, whose relics had long since been installed in the medieval capitals of Moldavia and Walachia, were declared ‘Romanian saints’ with a countrywide cult.7 But early Communist times did not offer a proper climate for acclaiming saints, let alone ‘national’ ones, and it was clearly understood that the Communist authorities would frustrate any such endeavour by the Church. A proper canonization process, respecting the tradition and the rules of the Church, took place only in the transition period, in June 1992.8 This was the first real act of canonization, carried through by the Holy Synod, resulting in the proclamation of more than 40 ‘national’ or ‘Romanian saints’,9 as well as a ‘Sunday of the Romanian saints’ in the Orthodox calendar.10 Among the figures found worthy by the Romanian Orthodox Church were bishops known locally, monks and hermits – some of them imported from south of the Danube in earlier times. The communiqué issued by the Romanian Patriarchal See on 21 June 1992 indicated: A number of important confessing hierarchs, Pravoslav ruling princes, pious characters, and martyrs, who have remained present in the memory of the righteous Romanian people as saints, will now receive their confirmation. They lived, confessed, and defended their faith, even at the cost of their lives.11 None of the persons proposed for canonization was a martyr of the recent Communist persecution. Personalities such as Nicolae Steinhardt,12 who eventually became an Orthodox cleric after escaping imprisonment, and others were simply ignored by the Synod. This decision by the Romanian Orthodox Church was widely criticized in the Romanian press. There was also a polemic,13 started by some members of the Orthodox clergy, against the canonization process initiated by other Romanian confessional groups, mainly Catholics and Greek Catholics (Uniates) who proposed personalities of the twentieth century for beatification, such as Árón Márton, Catholic Bishop of Alba Iulia in Transylvania, or Iuliu Cardinal Hossu and Monsignor Vladimir Ghyka, put forth by the Uniates.

The emerging cult of Stephen the Great Confessional canonization procedures were started, without exception, at the beginning of the transition period in Romania. The process in the Romanian Orthodox Church caused a considerable stir, provoking a strong echo in church as well as secular papers for two reasons: first, because among the candidates were two very prominent figures from medieval Romanian history,

Moldavian Prince Stephen and Romania 95

and second, as already mentioned, because of the absence of martyrs of Communism. Why? Ranging high above the whole field of recently created saints of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Stephen the Great, ruling Prince of Moldavia (1457–1504), was everybody’s undisputed candidate for a prominent place in the pantheon of national veneration. No one in Romania even thought of contesting his importance and role in national history. If Stephen was at all challenged, it was only by Prince Constantine Brâncoveanu of Walachia (1688–1714). People remembered, however, that Prince Stephen was called ‘the Good’ even during his lifetime, and, soon after his death, he was known as ‘the Great’ (meaning ‘the Old’), and even ‘the Saint’, especially in folklore,14 as the chronicles report.15 There were, of course, comments to the effect that, according to tradition, certain necessary elements were missing in both cases, such as a pious conduct in life, or miracles. These elements caught the attention of the public and of a secularized Westernized intellectual elite in the country, as we show below. With Stephen the Great, the Romanian Orthodox Church was choosing a hero from Romanian history who, in the consciousness and the pantheon of his people, had long taken his place as a symbol of national identity. Stephen’s reputation as a figure of national cultural eminence was created in the nineteenth century, among others by two young students in Vienna who were to become two of the most famous Romanian poets, Mihai Eminescu and Ioan Slavici.16 As a symbol of national glory, Stephen was thereafter supported by the intellectual elites,17 in schoolbooks,18 in canonical Romanian literature learned widely by heart,19 and remembered on various monuments.20 S¸erban Papacostea, one of the most prominent scholars of medieval Romanian history, singled out four essential elements on which the reputation of Prince Stephen resided: state-building, resulting in a powerful and sovereign state, respected by its neighbours; raising strong fighting forces, respected in battle; fostering a national Moldavian culture, including the building or restoring of a very considerable number of ecclesiastic monuments (churches as well as monasteries); and prestige as a fighter against the Ottoman Empire that endangered the whole of Europe. He writes that ‘Stephen’s creative endeavour resulted not only in the building of a powerful state, a remarkable military force and great international prestige, but also in the development of culture and the establishment of a specific Moldavian cultural tradition.’21 In a recently published school book, we read: ‘The name of Stephen the Great is a symbol of the Moldavian Principality’s fight for sovereignty.’22 In other school books and in the writings of historians such as Papacostea, Giurescu, Iorga23 and Xenopol, the same symbolism and metaphors are used when singling out Stephen the Great as the symbol of national glory. They emphasize the virtuousness of the ‘good ruler’, his strong personality, the fact that he was the builder of a centralized state, that he was a skilful diplomat,

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warlord, fighter for political independence, and protector of the Orthodox creed and Church.24 These elements from the prince’s biography have long been integrated to form the ‘myth of Stephen the Great’. In addition, the choice of Stephen by the Romanian Orthodox Church was further justified when we consider the functions that medieval national patron saints performed.25 Two predominate: first, accumulating evidence that a given region or state belongs to Christendom; and second, providing identity, cohesion and protection to the territory or the people. This has been to the benefit of the emerging cult of Stephen. The chronicles26 as well as the poets have contributed to form an image, which has long since declared and preserved Stephen the Great as the most important ruler in Romanian history. He has his place in Romania’s national patrimony since the chronicles of the seventeenth century. Hence, in 1992 this medieval ruler’s biography did not have to be rewritten to match a saint’s vita and legend. It is not surprising to find the use of symbolic political rhetoric in connection with the proclamation of Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen in 1866 as Prince of Romania and also in the prelude to the coronation festivities in 1881. Before the coronation of Romania’s first king, Charles I, a campaign was started by the Ceremonies Department to track down the so-called crown of Stephen the Great, seen in an illuminated miniature from a Book of Prayers of the fifteenth century. No crown could be found, neither in Moldavian collections, nor abroad, in Krakow, Prague or Vienna. Such a symbolic object would have fitted in quite neatly in 1881 to link historical tradition with the new dynasty, thus creating ties of legitimacy. The proclamation was done in a ‘democratic’ manner, namely by the Romanian Parliament.27 Such a precedent, however, was ignored for a long time: It is interesting to note, for example, that during the Communist period, President Nicolae Ceaus¸escu refused four times the canonization of Stephen the Great.28

Could this medieval prince be a saint? There are dark parts and sinful incidents in Stephen’s life. He was rash, choleric, a ladies’ man, and also known as one who, when in a temper tantrum, had his boyar adversaries killed.29 In the opinion of some of the commentators on the canonization, an ‘accentuation’ of Stephen as a hero was appropriate in order to emphasize his ‘spiritual integrity’ and his ‘good intentions’.30 It was argued that he was remembered among Romanians all over the world for his unflinching Orthodox faith – Stephen is reported to have built 47 churches and to have fought numerous battles against the Ottoman Turks. Many commentators maintained that his well-known shortcomings should be no obstacle because in the Orthodox faith God is merciful, especially towards sinners.31 Other commentators held the opposite view concerning Stephen’s aptitude for saintliness, among them Gabriela Adames¸teanu and the poet Mircea Dinescu.32 For his part, without mentioning the sanctification,

Moldavian Prince Stephen and Romania 97

Papacostea dwells largely on the surviving glory of Stephen the Great in the collective memory of his people: When, on 2 July 1504, Stephen passed away at Suceava and a few days later was taken to his final resting place, accompanied by the pious mourning of an entire people, he was starting a new kind of posthumous existence in the affection and collective memory of his contemporaries and of the following generations as one of the nation’s great heroes. . . . The myth began to take shape. A people of peasants . . . placed their ruler in a realm of tales and legends, but their creative imagination actually did nothing else but to project the salient features of his real character into the world of miracles, . . . endowed with supernatural powers, . . . protected in battle by supernatural forces, . . . a mythical hero who cut down the Turks and Tatars in the wars, the ‘undaunted prince’ who would destroy anyone that dared invade his country, ‘the ruler of the land.’ . . . After his death (the chronicle went on), until this day, they call him Prince Stephen the Saint, not for the sake of his soul which is in the hands of God, because he has sins, too, but for his brave deeds, which no prince, either before or after him, has ever equalled.33

The sainthood proclamation of Prince Stephen the Great in 1992 Among the traditional attributes of a patron, the protection of the territory and the people in question are included, in addition to his or her aptitude to confer a feeling of identity and belonging.34 These elements were brought to the fore on the occasion of the sainthood proclamation of Prince Stephen the Great at Putna monastery on 2 July 1992, the day of Stephen’s death. The festive proclamation service took place in the presence of masses of local people as well as numerous secret police agents, as the press reported. The entire hierarchy of the Romanian Orthodox Church from Bucharest was present, headed by Patriarch Teoctist and Metropolitan Daniel from Ias¸i. In attendance from Northern Bukovina in Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova – both of them medieval Romanian (Moldavian) territories – were rnevsky, as Archbishop Vladimir of Bassarabia and Archbishop Onufrie of C well as Bishop Petre of Ba l¸ t i. Together with these high-ranking representa tives of the Romanian Orthodox Church were also former Prime Minister Petre Roman and Romania’s President Ion Iliescu, both former Communists and outstanding figureheads in the transition process, together with local politicians. Ironically, or perhaps in a show of good manners, ex-King Michael of Romania refused the invitation to attend the ceremony at Putna.35 While the whole setting was traditionally religious, the message of this highly symbolic ceremony was mostly secular and political.

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Finally, in Putna there were many symbolic aspects incorporated into the proclamation service for Stephen the Great and Saint (in Romanian: binecuviosul) at a monastery, which has been linked with his name as founder, donator, burial place and also as the main site of national remembrance and worship since Habsburg times.36 The public witnessed a number of specifically historical and confessional symbolic gestures: the sword of Prince Stephen was brought from the Topkap¹ Museum in Istanbul and waved by Metropolitan Daniel to indicate ‘tradition’ as well as the struggle for ‘independence’ and ‘sovereignty’; a delegation from Mount Athos in Greece presented an icon of the Holy Virgin in which a particle of the true cross had been included; and a huge ‘Cross of the Romanian people’, carried by three lads from different Romanian provinces, all the way from Bucharest to Chis¸ina u, stopped over at Putna, and was added to the Proclamation Service.37 The Romanian Cross was intended to be put into the ‘Church of all Romanians’ in Chis¸ina u, which was to be built from donations coming from all orthodox parishes in Romania.38 The public was also informed that a saint-like cult had started spontaneously around Prince Stephen and various modern ‘prayers’ were invented for the occasion.39

Conclusion According to a long-standing tradition, saints are created, constructed, redefined, or revitalized in response to changing political times and cultural situations. This was the case with many post-Communist countries, namely Poland, the Czech Republic and Russia. Likewise, national patrons were adopted, re-installed, or even canonized in Romania and in most of the newly formed nation-states in Central Europe, for example, Slovakia as well as the Balkan Republics.40 In Romania, a real effort was undertaken in 1992, under the leadership of the Orthodox Church, to make of Prince Stephen a modern patron saint. This was mainly done by making use of well-known medieval patterns. A conservative, retrospective procedure was chosen – canonization – and a traditional, familiar-sounding narrative was build around Prince Stephen the Great and Saint. One who had long since become the most splendid secular hero of Romanian national history and culture seemed to be lacking one more element to his glory: the aura of sanctity. This he was given in 1992. In doing so, the Church declared him a protector of the Orthodox faith and, in modern political terms, a symbol of state unity and independence. There was a virtual competition for the creation of national saints at that time, where the Church commanding the biggest audience, the Romanian Orthodox Church, was trying to win this race – 40 saints were presented in one single occasion. This was one way that the Romanian Orthodox Church sought to come back in the public sphere (including the political scene) after decades of Communist atheism.

Moldavian Prince Stephen and Romania 99

There also arose a polemic against the Greek–Roman Uniates as ‘schismatics’. That smaller Romanian confession group (whom the Orthodox Church abolished in 1948) was reinstalled in 1990.41 And they too had beatification procedures pending at the Vatican. While supporters of the traditional, retrospective narrative were found among the Orthodox Romanian clergy, and Romanians by and large more or less accepted Stephen as a saint, the attempt by the Romanian Orthodox Church to bring itself back into the political sphere was countered by sharp protest. Cultural elites and the political opposition (with few exceptions) objected to this usage of venerated national symbols. It was argued that this attempt paralleled the way Ceaus¸escu had redefined narratives of national history to celebrate his personal leadership, and also suggested a too evident effort by the leading establishment of the state and the Church to cover up their own involvement with the Communist regime. Others argued that such strategies to foster identity were obsolete in a modern civil society. Patterns for constructing a national identity make reference to traditional narratives from the time of medieval as well as modern state-building. They often present an amalgam of secular and (pseudo-)religious concepts including ‘sovereignty’, ‘territorial integrity’, ‘purity of the faith’, or ‘one’s own singular cultural tradition’. It was the secular intellectual elites rather than the Orthodox Romanian Church42 that kept alive the myth of the medieval hero Stephen. In the post-Communist period, the Church tried to compensate its lost importance in a secular civic society by canonizing ‘national’ saints. Thus there was in Romania a reversal of the normal process, which took a secular national hero to his sanctification. Fifteen years later, on 1 January 2007, when Romania became a member of the European Union, Stephen the Great stood out unquestionably as this country’s most prominent champion for national as well as European integration. Still, it is not clear whether Stephen the Great is a religious – the patron saint – or merely a state symbol of modern Romania. One thing is clear: he has been treated as a state symbol since the nineteenth century. The recent church ceremony of canonizing a national hero as a patron saint of the Orthodox Church in secular Romania had a certain ambiguity. It suggested that Romania on its road to the EU remains a country at a crossroads between modern political and traditional cultural options and challenges.

Notes 1 Teoctist (Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church), ‘Sfint¸ii în Biserica Ortodoxa  Româna ’, in Biserica ortodoxa  româna  (BOR) 40 (1992), 20–21 and ‘Actul sinodal al Bisericii Ortodoxe Autochefale Române privind canonizarea unor sfint¸i români’, in ibid., pp. 7–17. 2 Krista Zach, ‘Funktionalitätswandel vom christlichen Märtyrer zum National patron der Moldau – Johannes der Neue von Suceava’, in Edda Binder Iijima and Vasile Dumbrava, eds, Stefan der Große – Fürst der Moldau. Symbolfunktion und

100 The Legacy of the National State

3 4 5 6

7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29

Bedeutungswandel eines mittelalterlichen Herrschers (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2005), pp. 61–77. Ibid., pp. 61 and 74–5. Edda Binder Iijima, Die Institutionalisierung der rumänischen Monarchie unter Carol I., 1866–1881 (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2003), p. 27 (quotation in French). Ibid., p. 28. Nestor (Metropolitan of Oltenia), ‘Sfint¸i români canonizat¸i în anul 1992’, BOR 40 (1992), 24–5. In the transition period, such prominent figures as Andrej Rubljov in Russia, Simeon and Sava in Serbia, or Ivan Rilskij in Bulgaria were added to the ranks of medieval saints. Teoctist, ‘Sfint¸ii în Biserica Ortodoxa˘ Româna˘’, p. 20. Ibid., pp. 21–2 and ‘Actul sinodal’, pp. 9–12. Ibid., p. 22. The second Sunday after Pentecost; see ibid., p. 15. Adeva˘rul, 18 June 1992, no. 677, p. 1. Nicolae Steinhardt, Jurnalul fericirii (Cluj-Napoca: Editura Dacia, 1992). Popa Calist, ‘The last ones will be the first ones’, Adeva˘rul, 20–21 June 1992, pp. 1 and 3. Mihai Alexandru Canciovici, Domnitori români în legende (Bucharest: Editura Rosetti, 2005), pp. 88–233. S¸erban Papacostea, Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldavia 1457–1504 (Bucharest: Ed. Enciclopedica˘, 1996). The Good (Rom. cel Bun), see the Chronicles by Grigore ¸ arii Moldovei, ed. Petre P. Panaitescu (Bucharest: Editura Ureche, Letopiset¸ul T ¸arii Moldovei s¸i O sama Academiei, 1958) and Ion Neculce, Letopiset¸ul T  de cuvinte, ed. Iorgu Iordan (Bucharest: Editura Academiei, 1955). In the last, chapters 1–9 begin with ‘S¸tefan cel Bun’. Anghel Popa, National Feasts at Putna (Câmpulung Muscel: Editura Fundat¸iei Culturale ‘Alexandru Bogza’, 2004), Chapter I. Serbarea din 1871, pp. 17–94. Ibid. Mirela-Luminit¸a Murgescu, Intre ‘bunul cres¸tin’ s¸i ‘bravul român’. Rolul s¸colii primare în construirea identita ˘ t¸ii nat¸ionale românes¸ti, 1831–1878 (Ias¸i: Editura A ‘2, 1999). Eminescu’s S¸tefan cel Mare. Sketches for a Hymn (ca. 1883), in Mihai Eminescu, Poezii (Bucurest: Editura Perpesicius, 1958), p. 631–3. Andi Mihalache, ‘S¸tefan cel Mare în cultura istorica˘ a începutului de secol XX’, Anuarul Institutului de istorie ‘A.D.Xenopol’, 41 (2004), 31–65. Papacostea, Stephen the Great, p. 69. Corneliu Popovici and Angela Popovici, Istorie. Manual pentru clasa a VI-a. (Chis¸ina˘u: 2005), p. 90. Wim van Meurs, ‘Die Entdeckung Stefans des Großen’, in Iijima and Dumbrava, eds, Stefan der Große, p. 81. Nicolae Iorga added to the hero’s myth in preparing his 400th birthday festivities in 1904; see Popa, National Feasts, pp. 95–126. Popovici and Popovici, Istorie, pp. 90–92. See also Papacostea, Stephen the Great, pp. 68–9. Arnold Angenendt, Patron, in Lexikon des Mittelalters, vol. 1–10 (Munich Zürich: Artemis Verlag, 1980–99), here: vol. 6, tr. 1807. Ureche and Neculce (see above, note 15). Iijima, Die Institutionalisierung, pp. 584–5. Evenimentul, 3 July 1992, no. 285, p. 1. ¸ a˘rii Moldovei, ed. Constantin C. Grigore Ureche and Simion Dasca˘lul, Letopiset¸ul T Giurescu (Craiova: Scrisul românesc, 1939), p. 61: ‘au fost om cu pacate’.

Moldavian Prince Stephen and Romania 101 30 Sorin Dumitrescu, ‘Meritul s¸i mila’, in Rock & Popi. Carte de veghe cres¸tina˘ (Bucharest: Ed. Anastasia, 1998), pp. 103–15. 31 Ibid., pp. 114–15. 32 Gabriela Adames¸teanu, ‘Prea Sfint¸itul prega˘tes¸te ghipsul’, 22, no. 27 (128), (10–16 July, 1992), 1: ‘Among other belated goodies Transformation presented us with the metamorphosis of Kings into Saints.’ In her opinion, the leaders of the Orthodox Church intentionally fail to differentiate between historical and religious matters as had been the custom under the former regime, thus manoeuvring present-day politics in favour of the post-Communist candidate Iliescu, who was running for the Presidency once more. Mircea Dinescu is present with a bon-mot in the satirical paper Cat¸avencu: ‘[Here,] the Lord is bashing with Saints instead of sticks’, Cat¸avencu 25 (2) (1992), 1. 33 Papacostea, Stephen the Great, pp. 77–8 (quotations from Chronicle of the Land). See also Ureche – and Dasca˘lul: Letopiset¸ul, p. 61; Dinu C. Giurescu, Istoria României în date (Bucharest. Ed. Enciclopedica˘, 2003), p. 71. 34 Angenendt, Lexikon, passim. 35 ‘In umbra lui S¸tefan’, in: România libera˘, 3 July 1992, p. 1. 36 Popa, National Feasts, pp. 17–128. 37 Evenimentul, 3 July 1992, no. 285, p. 1. 38 Roxana Iordache, ‘Sa˘rba˘toare la Putna’, in România libera˘, 4 July 1992, pp. 1 and 3. 39 Ibid. 40 Stefan Samerski and Krista Zach, eds, Renaissance der Nationalpatrone. Errinerungskulturen in Ostmitteleuropa im 20. und 21. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Böhlau, 2007). 41 Patriarch Teoctist in his sermon at Putna, in Evenimentul, 3 July 1992, no. 285, p. 1. See also I. David, ‘Sfintii Brâncoveni’, in BOR 107; Popa Calist, in Adeva  rul, 20–21 June 1992, p. 3. 42 Mihalache, ‘S¸ tefan cel Mare în cultura istorica˘ a începutului de secol XX’, passim and Popa, National feasts, passim.

7 The Invention of Modern Poland: Pil sudski and the Politics of Symbolism1

´

Mieczysl aw B.B. Biskupski

´

Between 1918 and 1939, the date of 11 November was increasingly regarded as the principal patriotic anniversary in Poland, marking the return of independence after more than a century. However, the Second World War interrupted this commemoration and after 1945 the Communist authorities preferred to ignore the occasion. Only since the re-establishment of a truly sovereign government has 11 November regained something of its pre-1939 importance.2 However, it is problematical that 11 November marks the birth of Polish independence. The person most closely associated with the events of that day, Józef Pil´sudski, for a time did not agree with this coincidence.3 Ignacy Paderewski, one of Poland’s other patriarchs, seems never to have acknowledged the date at all; Wincenty Witos, thrice premier, specifically denied that 11 November had any historical importance. During the Second Republic (1918–39), political factions and the scholarly community debated the correct anniversary of their country’s rebirth and did not arrive at a satisfactory resolution.4 However, for the followers of Pil´ sudski, 11 November was unquestionably the day upon which Poland was reborn because it signified the moment when their hero dramatically intervened in a confusing concatenation of events. Hence, 11 November 1918 became the commemorative date of a Pil´ sudskiite conception of Poland.

The historical background In the final stages of the First World War, the Central Powers were in possession of most of Polish territory. Two years before, on 5 November 1916, they had proclaimed the creation of a Polish kingdom, but without clear borders and obviously dependent upon its authors. The rudimentary Polish government that grew up within these constrained circumstances, the so-called Provisional State Council – later transformed into a Regency Council – was never able to create an independent regime and its close association with the occupiers precluded it from gaining any moral authority among Poles. The three Polish 102

Pil´ sudski and the Politics of Symbolism 103

regents – good and decent men but without any public following – instinctively understood their position in the autumn of 1918 and made no effort to proclaim themselves the government of Poland at the moment of the German defeat. On 10 November, Pil´sudski returned to Warsaw. A socialist-turned-soldier, Pil´sudski had become the leading political figure in Poland during the course of the war. Working first with the Austrians then with the Germans, Pil´sudski had always kept his political options open and created an underground Polish Military Organization (Polska Organizacja Wojskowa – POW) to cover any eventuality. His prominence during the war ultimately rested on the fact that he was able to epitomize an essentially military response to Poland’s geopolitical dilemma. Creating legions at the very start of the war which fought alongside the Austrians and against the Russians, Pil´sudski adopted in both form and substance a militarized political programme that captured the imagination of Poles everywhere. This transformed him from a factional leader into a national hero.5 However, his wartime cooperation with the Central Powers could have discredited him as it did the Regency government. But, in July 1917, he dramatically refused to take an oath of loyalty to the occupying powers, which led in turn to his arrest and imprisonment at Magdeburg whence he returned to Warsaw only at war’s end. Having fought against the Russians alongside the Austrians at the beginning of the war, and then worked with the Germans, Pil´sudski was thus conveniently arrested by the Germans. This made him politically the perfect Pole – opposed simultaneously by all three partitioning powers. No other prominent political figure had so marketable a pedigree.6 Moreover, Pil´sudski was a man of the left but regarded by the conservatives as the guarantor of order, ‘the only man who could master the revolutionary wave . . . [and] the only person probably able to stop the conservative nationalists from overthrowing a socialist government ’.7 In the autumn of 1918, it was in the interests of the Germans, whose government was descending into chaos, to help Pil´sudski return to Warsaw. For the very numerous German forces stretched over a vast territory in the east, a cooperative arrangement with any new authority in Warsaw was vital. In the words of Harry Kessler, who was dispatched to persuade Pil´sudski to cooperate with Germany, ‘only a national hero in Poland could avert a catastrophe there’.8 Pil´sudski arrived in Warsaw by train early on 10 November; the Germans had informed the Regency government only the night before.9 It was obvious that for the Germans the regents whom they had installed were no longer of use. Pil´sudski was met at the station by one of them, Zdzisl´ aw Prince Lubomirski, as well as a group of his devoted lieutenants. Lubomirski was in a state of agitation and his meeting with Pil´sudski made it clear that he was prepared to welcome Pil´ sudski as a deus ex machina. Lubomirski wanted only some graceful way of exiting from history.

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Describing himself in terms both vague and grand, as ‘the representative of the Polish nation’,10 Pil´sudski met with representatives of the disintegrating and thoroughly demoralized German administration to discuss the end of the occupation regime.11 The POW had prepared an elaborate plan for the disarming of all of the troops of the Central Powers in occupied Poland.12 This was a monumental task because the POW and its allies had perhaps only 15 000 men, armed largely with enthusiasm facing 80 000 Germans and more than 100 000 Austrians.13 As the Germans began either to disarm – occasionally with sharp fighting – or simply abandoned their posts, Warsaw fell increasingly under Polish control. Hence the disintegration of German control in Warsaw, and in many other areas of Poland, was substantially reckoned to Pil´sudski’s account although he did this without acting in any official capacity.14 If any one act established Polish independence, it was this freeing of the capital from the Germans.15 The role of Pil´ sudski’s POW in this process was central.16 The regents were painfully aware of their lack of popular support and of their reputation as German puppets. Moreover, the disintegration of German control in Warsaw threatened the breakdown of law and order. Lubomirski later recalled that ‘all parties, from the most radical right to the left wanted us to give Pil´sudski control’.17 At first, on the evening of the 11th, the regents ceded to Pil´ sudski only command of the armed forces, an authority he was already exercising de facto.18 With this step the regents, all three conservative monarchists, joined the radical leftists in recognizing Pil´sudski as the military leader of Poland. Pil´sudski bided his time, wishing to manoeuvre to gain mastery over the situation without acquiring any debts of gratitude to anyone in the process.19 Three days later, on 14 November, the regents relented and entrusted the ‘responsibility before the nation’ to Pil´sudski, granting him thereby total power although it is not clear on the basis of what authority of their own they did so.20 Pil´sudski responded two days later by informing the major powers of ‘the existence of an independent Polish state’. He did so without any date of its inception being noted, and he issued this announcement in his capacity as ‘commander in chief of the Polish army’, not as head of any government as, in fact, one did not exist.21 Hence this document, which more than any other announced the rebirth of Poland, gives us no birth date and indicates no parents. Only on the 18th did the first modern Polish government, presided over by Je drzej Moraczewski, a friend of Pil´sudski’s and acting at his behest, convene. It was only on 22 November that Pil´sudski declared: ‘As the Provisional Head of State, I assume supreme authority in the Polish Republic, and I shall exercise it until the summoning of the Legislative Parliament.’ 22 Pil´ sudski enjoyed the title of Chief of State and effective control of the only instrument that mattered, the army. Although the exact moment of Poland’s rebirth is far from clear, the chief events of the chaotic November days in Warsaw featured Pil´sudski. In 1923,

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with his characteristic feigned nonchalance, he commented on his own role in these events: In November 1918 something happened, not the least historical, just a typical event . . . a man walked from the Vienna station who, it turns out, was named Józef Pil´sudski. In the course of the next several days, without any efforts on the part of this man, without any pressure, plotting, or any kind of permission, something most untypical occurred. This man became a dictator.23 Thus 11 November represents only the day when the regents granted Pil´sudski powers he already had and which they had a problematical moral and legal authority to grant. Hence the day marks only technically the beginning of Pil´sudski’s command of Poland’s armed forces and really nothing else. It was only eleven days later that he became head of state, and that happened by his own hand.24 It is Pil´sudski and not Roman Dmowski or Ignacy Jan Paderewski who is linked with 11 November, despite the fact that these two figures are certainly patriarchs of modern Poland and deserve a good deal of credit for Poland’s reappearance on the map of Europe. Dmowski was successful in winning for the Polish National Committee (Komitet Narodowy Polski – KNP) – which he created and dominated – the support of the Western powers, including the USA, in the closing stages of the war. But Dmowski’s KNP was never recognized as the provisional government of Poland. Nor was Dmowski in Poland at the crucial moment when the war ended, and authority in Poland was still fluid and capable of being grasped and shaped. Similarly, Paderewski, whose charismatic eloquence did much to make Poland a ‘good cause’ in the West, particularly in the USA, was also far from Warsaw when the capital was reemerging from foreign occupation.25 By the time Paderewski returned to Poland the best he could arrange was to serve as Prime Minister in a government dominated by Pil´sudski, a post to which he was preposterously unsuited and from which he resigned an embittered man less than a year later. In addition, no matter how successful Dmowski had been in Western Europe or Paderewski in the USA, no foreign power could grant Poland its independence; or in other words, no independence granted by a foreign power would ever be fully satisfying to the Poles. This is something that the Communists would discover after 1944 when they tried to rouse the Poles to commemorate what amounts to the Soviet granting of Polish independence. To be a national holiday, the independence commemorated had to be something that the Poles had crafted by themselves. Hence, of all the significant Polish political figures in 1918, only Pil´sudski was in the right spot at the right time.26 Whereas we may well quibble about the actual work he contributed to the project of Polish independence, he was still the best situated to receive any personal credit available.

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Hence, 11 November is a Pil´sudskiite day by necessity, and the only argument is over degree. This means that 11 November became politically partisan from its inception and symbolized less a certain date than a certain historiographical and political tradition. This was the date that sanctified a certain schema to explain Poland’s rebirth: first, it was essentially a Polish national project, the Poles were the efficient cause; second, the chief agency by which this result was worked was the Polish military, and here we should understand the military broadly to mean the reanimation of the martial spirit; and finally, and centrally, the directing will was Pil´sudski, who thus becomes the architect and inspiration of modern Poland. Perhaps the most devoted Pil´sudskiite of them all, Bolesl´ aw Wieniawa-Dl´ugoszowski, epitomized this interpretation in his memoirs: November 11, 1918 arrived. A day of liberty and freedom, disarming the Germans and the Commandant’s return from captivity, and, at the same time for both him and all of Poland, the day of the fruits of his extraordinarily far-seeing preparations.27 Jan Lechón, soon to become Poland’s leading poet, had been working on a long work filled with allusions, often dark, to Poland’s past, was overcome by the events of 11 November. An ardent devotee of Pil´ sudski, he was in patriotic transport, suffered a virtual breakdown, and, in a state of extreme agitation entitled the last portion of ‘Karamazynowy poemat’ simply ‘Pil´sudski’.28 His reconsideration of Poland ended and began with Pil´ sudski. But the simplest example of this attitude is the remark of Wincenty Solek, a humble forester, a soldier of the Legions, who lived and died in obscurity. He remembered 11 November this way: ‘After years of slavery, Poland was Free. All the patriots’ paths converged at one place whose name was Independence. The man who embodied it was Józef Pil´sudski’.29 Even those who were not loyal to Pil´ sudski before 1918 and were his most mordant critics afterwards admitted the extraordinary power he commanded at that moment. Marian Romeyko, a lifelong opponent, noted: On that day a large segment of society acknowledged Pil´sudski as the saviour of the Fatherland, as the leader of the nation. On that day he secured recognition for himself from everybody, regardless of origin, profession, or religion, with lightening speed, automatically, without any effort. . . . We forgot about everything that had been said against Pil´ sudski. On that day we became his sincere partisans, blindly ready to obey his orders with complete confidence in the future. . . . [Pil´sudski] was a panacea, a universal remedy for every pain, every need whether it be in Warsaw or in all of Poland.30 Such a historico-philosophical understanding of Polish independence is radically divisive. Accepting it, you become perforce a ‘Pil´ sudskiite’, not merely

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a supporter of the marshal but an acolyte.31 The date 11 November is rendered simultaneously a national holiday and a quasi-bonding ritual for the devotees of the Pil´ sudski cult. However, for those who see Poland’s rebirth either as largely the work of other forces or other men, 11 November becomes profoundly disquieting, its celebration a political apostasy.

Creating a national holiday In 1919 a committee of prominent citizens was organized to present a ‘national gift’ to Pil´sudski on the first anniversary of the restoration of the state.32 It was obviously not yet a national event and certainly not a day that Pil´sudski regarded as warranting unusual attention. He was not even in Warsaw, but in Wilno, where he was attending the re-inauguration of the university there.33 Polish Independence Day was first celebrated only in 1920, marked by the formal conferring on Pil´sudski of the baton of Marshal of Poland. It was exclusively a military celebration and ended with Pil´sudski convivially visiting the soldiers of the garrison in their barracks. Significantly, the day chosen for the celebration was 14 November.34 The next year a number of features were added that became standard components of the commemorations, including a parade, a theatrical performance and the conferring of decorations. In 1921, these were principally for POW veterans who had played a role in disarming the Germans in Warsaw in 1918.35 In the Polish parliament, dominated by the political right disinclined to Pil´sudski, the November anniversary went largely unnoticed in the early 1920s.36 In 1923, Pil´sudski retired from actively political life and 11 November became a day for the embittered Pil´sudskiites to gather round the marshal, remember past glories, and excoriate the government.37 Meanwhile the governments that followed Pil´sudski were not keen on celebrating the day of their nemesis’s triumph. Wincenty Witos, thrice premier in the 1920s, who referred to 11 November as the day ‘unjustly fixed as the anniversary of the re-establishment of Poland’, harboured an abiding dislike for Pil´sudski and all his supporters.38 During the 1923–26 interlude, Pil´sudski, acting as a private citizen, would mark the occasion by giving speeches or press interviews recalling the events of 1918, but official commemorations were relatively modest. In 1924 Pil´sudski delivered a lengthy analysis of the events of 1918 in which he argued that the precise date for the restoration of independence was most likely between 22 and 28 of November 1918.39 It would seem that 11 November was in danger of being excised as the national holiday of the Second Republic. However, in 1925, a huge procession of over 1000 officers made a pilgrimage to Pil´sudski’s bucolic residence and the veterans gave passionate speeches celebrating his role in the 1918 events.40 The ostensible purpose of their efforts was to celebrate the anniversary of Pil´sudski’s return from Magdeburg on 10 November 1918. It was essentially a Pil´ sudskiite rally. Scarcely six months later, he returned

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to power via coup d’état and many of the officers who had gathered on the 10th played leading roles in the May coup. It was with Pil´sudski’s return to power in 1926 that 11 November became transformed into the embodiment of not only Polish independence but a theory of how it was regained, manu militari, and who was its spiritus movens.41 The institutionalization of 11 November began in 1926 when schools and government offices were closed for the first time. The evening before, in commemoration of Pil´sudski’s return from Magdeburg, the practice was started of having the officers of the Warsaw garrison report to Pil´sudski at his residence, Belvedere (Belweder). Although the chief political dignitaries joined the soldiers, the ceremony was brief and rather modest.42 Public commemoration of the event began with a mass in Warsaw at the Cathedral. Pil´sudski, not then a Roman Catholic, was absent. A military review followed. The day, as has often been the case in Warsaw, was cold and rainy. Festivities concluded with a patriotic theatrical performance and then a soirée at the Royal Castle.43 The prominent populist politician, Maciej Rataj, no Pil´ sudskiite, concluded that 11 November ‘has substantial legitimacy because it is connected with the freeing of the capital’. However, ‘Pil´sudski, by ordering the formal celebration of this day, has connected it with his person – it was also the anniversary of his return from Magdeburg. Poland began with him and rests upon him’.44 The initiating event that raised 11 November to sacramental status was an extraordinary live radio talk Pil´sudski gave on 11 November 1926, just a few months after seizing power.45 Ostensibly presenting a fairy tale for Polish children, Pil´sudski concocted a bizarre story about magical things occurring on 11 November, featuring a ‘leader’ riding a horse called ‘Chestnut’, who rose from obscurity to command a great army in an ‘enchanted world, transformed’.46 Pil´sudski explained that ‘the restoration of the body and the soul’s rebirth’ will invigorate the fearful, and concluded by wishing that the ‘magic 11th of November’ will make all Poles, not just children, ‘great-souled and reborn’. Pil´sudski thus presented a vision of himself, the army and 11 November as having magically reanimated Poland.47 He had often despaired at the failure of the Poles to rise to the greatness he thought worthy of them, but here he attempted to induce it by an act of ritualization in which 11 November 1918 became literally magical. It was the birth of a new conception of the national holiday, not as a historic anniversary but as an enchantment. As recently as 1924, Pil´sudski had denied that 11 November was the correct date of Polish independence, but after regaining power he elevated it to talismanic status. This was part of the conscious creation of a pedigree for modern Poland, which put the army and Pil´sudski at the centre. Although personal vanity and the desire by Pil´sudski’s entourage to establish themselves as the elect of modern Poland certainly played a role in this transformation, the motives are rather more complex.48 Long before 1926, Pil´sudski had concluded that it was necessary to create a mythic status for himself, both for

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reasons of practical politics and also to respond to what he concluded were the psychic cravings of the Polish people, long demoralized by partition and defeat.49 This conviction was only strengthened by the failure of Poland after 1918 to gain an international position sufficient to protect it from a dangerous world. Poland’s failure to become the pre-partition Commonwealth reborn – a failure that Pil´sudski may well have personalized – haunted him and made him increasingly critical of Polish realities: Poland after 1918 was not the country Pil´ sudski thought history demanded it be, given unalterable geopolitical realities.50 Hence it was all the more imperative that Poland be united, self-confident, and purged of the weaknesses which had doomed the old Commonwealth centuries earlier. Hence 11 November was part of a Pil´sudskiite project to reanimate the Polish spirit. Thereafter 11 November was the emblem of a newly explained Poland, and Pil´sudski’s role was cast in a more profound category. The year 1928 marked the tenth anniversary of independence and it is not surprising that that year witnessed the first really large-scale commemorations of 11 November.51 Festivities extended over several days. The first and most symbolic step was the decision by the city council of Warsaw on 8 November to change the name of the main square in the city from Saxon to ‘Pil´sudski Square’ (Plac Pil´sudskiego). Just a few months previously the Senate had elected a new marshal, the Pil´sudskiite physician Julian Juliusz Szyman´ski, who replaced the endek Wojciech Tra pczyn´ski. Tra pczyn´ski loathed Pil´sudski and they had barely managed to remain on speaking terms.52 By contrast, Szyman´ski was an unabashed admirer. In 1928, he radically changed the atmosphere in parliament when he opened the legislative year of the Senate, on 11 November, with a paean dedicated to his hero: ‘Today, on the tenth anniversary, all thoughts turn to him who is the symbol of our independence and with whom the idea of independence grew.’ A tablet was unveiled in Pil´sudski’s honour in the chambers: ‘From the Senate to the Creator of the Polish Parliament’.53 The commemoration in 1928 began on 10 November with a large meeting of the former political prisoners, whose leader was Kazimierz Sosnkowski, Pil´sudski’s former fellow inmate at Magdeburg. In the evening of that day, Pil´sudski attended a screening of a film version of Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz, the national epic set in Pil´sudski’s native region near Wilno. Both that day and the next were filled with parades, diplomatic receptions, musical performances, award ceremonies, and visits by foreign dignitaries.54 The themes of the occasion were displayed unequivocally. Polish independence was associated with the efforts and sacrifices of the adherents in the prewar independence movement. The chief actor in this effort was Pil´sudski himself, whose long career was crowned by martial triumphs in the East over the eternal Russian enemy, a historic mission for Poland celebrated in the moving and nostalgic Pan Tadeusz. After ten years, the Pil´sudski government had created an entire ethos of the context and meaning of Polish independence which was to characterize the Pil´sudskiite.

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The notion of beginning the celebration of independence on the eve of its anniversary is also full of symbolic significance. To be sure it was that day, and not the 11th, when Pil´sudski actually returned to Warsaw. Hence, noting the occasion has a certain historical logic. But since it was the 11th and not the day before which was chosen as epitomizing independence, the evening of the 10th became perforce the vigil of the holiday, a recapitulation of the Polish Roman Catholic practice of attaching great attention to 24 December as the vigil (Wigilia) of the Lord’s birth. By political syncretism therefore, 10 November became the Wigilia of a profane national salvation, complete with a redeemer appearing from humble circumstances, a German prison rather than a manger. Once again in power after 1926, Pil´sudski made sure the 11 November commemorations were both grand and martial. His wife later recalled that he had long been convinced that the Poles ‘did little to commemorate the great victories in our history, and attached too much sentimentalism to our tragic anniversaries’. Hence it was at his initiative that a major military review was organized to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Sobieski’s 1683 victory at Vienna.55 For him, it was a bold declaration of Polish military glory against a background of increasing international danger.56 Similarly, 11 November was commemorated by a huge military review, either in the centre of Warsaw, or at the open Mokotów field in the south. Pil´sudski regularly attended, appearing on horseback until 1929.57 His military aide, Mieczysl´ aw Lepecki, recoded this adulatory reaction to observing Pil´sudski at the 1932 commemoration.

´

I could not control my emotions when I looked at him during the military review. I am not a scholar, and I do not know whether the proponents of the theory are right or wrong who argue the connection which develops between the physical body and the psyche’s structure, but when I gazed upon the physically superb form of the Marshall so well harmonized with the greatness of his spirit, I knew they were right.58 For the devoted Pil´sudskiites, 11 November was a spiritual bonding ritual. In the capital this became particularly significant as the international situation deteriorated in the 1930s and military bravado was increasingly a psychological substitute for tanks and planes.59 The Independence Day celebrations evolved into an increasingly solemn ritual, with little resemblance to a joyous celebration. The commemorations always began on the evening of the 10th, to mark the return from Magdeburg. Parades, dominated by military units, marched through the streets of Warsaw converging on the Belvedere. Pil´sudski then made his appearance, usually rather fleeting, to acknowledge the marchers and receive the military delegations. Although the concerts, parades and large military review of the next day provided a celebratory atmosphere, in the 1930s Pil´sudski was becoming increasingly distant, the

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‘Recluse of Belvedere’. Whether it was his wish, in the last yeas of his life Pil´sudski was behaving more like a shadowy national legend than a living political actor.60 The 1934 celebration was focused on a huge military review in Mokotów, which Pil´sudski, already gravely ill, attended. His wraith-like appearance and collapse from exhaustion made the day unusually emotional.61 Pil´sudski emphasized on the eve of his last 11 November that for him the anniversary was essentially a celebration of the military’s role in Poland’s rebirth.62

Creating a national symbol Pil´sudski died on 12 May 1935. The ceremonies later that year represented a further development in the relationship between 11 November and the cult of the marshal. During his lifetime the Pil´sudskiites had striven to claim for Pil´sudski the central role in regaining national independence. However, in 1935 for the most devoted Pil´sudskiites 11 November was worthy of commemoration not because it brought independence, but rather because that independence was the major achievement of their hero. Thus 11 November became the celebration of Pil´sudski, with independence merely serving as the occasion. On 10 November 1935, now named ‘POW Day’, the entire front page of the quasi-official Warsaw daily Gazeta Polska contained a drawing of Pil´sudski without a caption.63 Masses were celebrated in various parts of the city, followed by concerts and academic presentations.64 A military tattoo late in the afternoon heralded the major events: a mass meeting at Pil´sudski Square, two minutes of silence in Pil´sudski’s honour and then a long, solemn march to Belvedere. At 8:00 pm a large delegation of senior military officers congregated and, at precisely 8:45, the moment of Pil´sudski’s death the previous May, silence was observed for ‘The Creator of Independent Poland’.65 Stefan Starzyn´ski, mayor of Warsaw and a passionate devotee of the late Marshal, presented a large crowd in the centre of the city the Pil´sudskiite interpretation of what was being celebrated: Seventeen years ago the man returned from Magdeburg to whom we thank for reawakening in the nation faith in an independent Poland, for creating, through the Legions and the P.O.W., a Polish army, for winning by bloody sacrifice the borders of Poland, for building the country’s internal strength, for preparing us to live when the moment came when we would not have Him. Starzy´nski concluded by calling on the population to be loyal to Pil´sudski’s inspiration and to epitomize this faith in the erection of a monument in his honour in the Square.66 Later Starzy´nski spoke again, with redoubled fervour: Pil´sudski was the only one to thank for 11 November and hence the day was ‘a day of honour and homage by the whole nation for the Great Marshal’ who

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was, Starzyn´ski concluded, ‘The greatest Man in the course of our history’.67 At no point in his brief remarks did Starzyn´ski mention any faction not associated with Pil´sudski in his evocation of the birth of modern Poland.68 It was a completely Pil´sudskiite genealogy of the state: Poland had been created manu militari by soldiers under Pil´sudski. Not only were Dmowski and Paderewski omitted, but the entire significant Polish military tradition not associated with the Pil´sudskiites had disappeared from the national mythology. Indeed, 11 November was no longer celebrating Independence, it was celebrating Pil´sudski. The next day was to be dominated by a massive military review. In the place once occupied by Pil´sudski was his successor as Inspector General of the Armed Forces, Edward S´migl´y-Rydz, Pil´sudski’s favourite general.69 In addition to the review, there was a morning mass, lectures, military concerts, parades by uniformed societies, formal placing of flowers on the graves of fallen defenders of the capital, and the bestowing of innumerable state decorations by the President.70 Statues of Pil´sudski were unveiled, accompanied by the playing of martial music.71 All of these events were transmitted by radio.72 There was no school in session, and no state offices functioned. In reality the events were structured to make 11 November ‘Pil´sudski Day’ with independence as its reason. Schools throughout Poland were to read a proclamation which described Pil´sudski as the ‘directing genius of the rebuilding of the State . . . whose greatness is to be the object of admiration and pride for future generations’. The Gazeta Polska elevated Pil´sudski’s 11 November achievements to virtual salvation proportions. The religious overtones are unmistakable: It was a different people to which Józef Pil´sudski appeared on November 11, 1918 – different from those that live today. The martyrdom of his life, for his life was martyrdom, has changed the nation. . . . He who does not act [to serve Poland] betrays the Leader, even if he had been loyal to him during his lifetime. And only he who acts [for Poland] serves Him.73 With Pil´sudski’s death the servants of his memory transformed the meaning of 11 November. They completed the reconceptualization of the birth of modern Poland, which had been developing, episodically, since 1918. After 1935 it became a fully integrated ideological doctrine. Pil´sudski was the embodiment of the Polish insurrectionary tradition, whose distant spiritual heir was Tadeusz Kos´ciuszko. Pil´sudski re-knitted the patriotic–insurrectionary tradition, last in evidence in the January Rising of 1863. It was he who reanimated this spirit by founding the movement which led to the Legions of the First World War. These formations and these alone were the organizational, and moreover the spiritual, framework of the modern Polish army. And it was the army that created Poland, not an army as understood in the West, but the army as the embodiment of the most exalted Polish ideals of heroism, sacrifice and dedication. Pil´sudski was ‘the leader’ of this quintessentially Polish army and it,

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and no other force, no other actor, was responsible for Polish independence. But it did not act alone. Rather, by his return on 10 November Pil´sudski ignited the latent patriotic resources of the nation; he revivified his country. Hence his coming was a salvation event. The next day he succeeded to his rightful position as head of the nation; the technicalities and responsibilities of his function were insignificant details. He was deprived of his rightful position by sordid politicking in 1923, the temporary recrudescence of a perennial national failing, an episode of unworthiness reminiscent of the civic laxity which led to ruin in pre-partition Poland. But he returned in 1926 and order was restored in both practical and spiritual terms. It was with his return that the nation took on its proper form, adopted those signs and symbols which made it what it was and, latently, had always been: the anthem, the newly designed eagle, the exaltation of the army as a moral example. These were all the symbolic creation of a new Poland, based on the reanimation of the best traditional elements, which Pil´sudski alone had crafted and reanimated. Because Pil´sudski had worked this manu militari, the army had become central to the meaning of Polish life. The army was thus the central element in the creation of the ‘cult’ of Pil´sudski within Poland.74 To be sure, the usual trappings of vainglory associated with dictatorial regimes were present in post-1926 Poland, as are the elements of praetorianism among the veterans of the Legions. However, the motives behind the cult were rather more complex, and perhaps less squalid, than they first appear. The principal goal was to create integrating mechanisms to allow Poland to survive after 1918. The same motive could be attributed to several initiatives associated with Pil´sudski, or later his epigones, aimed at political mobilization and consolidation, most obviously the 1928 creation of the ‘Non-Partisan Bloc for Cooperation with the Government’ (Bezpartyjny Blok Wspól´pracy z Rza dem – BBWR), and the more ambitious and disparate 1936 ‘Camp of National Unity’ (Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego – OZON). But the creation and manipulation of symbols was the most subtle and most fundamental of all these efforts as it attempted to inveigle itself directly into the national consciousness. It attempted to structure the understanding of contemporary reality through the creation of a series of explanatory symbols. It was, in effect, an effort to reinvent Poland, to provide Poles with a national genealogy to replace the confusing and often lugubrious clutter of pre-partition history, and the heroic yet vain martyrdom of the insurrectionary era that followed. In this effort, 11 November was the central element. By focusing on that day as the beginning of Poland, it made it possible to suggest new paradigms for the nation – however fashioned on the material provided by a lengthy past. Pil´sudski was the architect of this new creation, and hence it was necessary to explain 11 November as peculiarly his work, purged of the contributions of others. Increasingly solemn and religious overtones accompanied the 11 November observations as Pil´sudski himself was transformed into a transcendent being, truly a providential figure.

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This introduced a paradoxical element into the Pisudskiite conception of Poland’s rebirth, which is the symbol represented by 11 November. If the figure of Pil´sudski transcended the significance of the event, the whole project risked self-annihilation as the death of Pil´sudski clearly left the nation bereft. Hence there is an inevitable logic in the fact that the Pil´sudski cult reached its apogee in 1935–37 and declined thereafter.75 This would correspond to a readjustment to the relative weights of the Pil´sudski symbol as against that of Independence Day. The first major step in this process was the designation of a new commander for the Polish military. Ironically, to preserve the essence of the Pil´sudskiite version of Poland the centrality of Pil´sudski had to be reduced. In 1936, the 10–11 November commemoration was used to announce the elevation of S´migl´y-Rydz to the rank of Marshal of Poland.76 Here we see an effort at multiple manipulations of symbols. Pil´sudski had been the first and only marshal. Now S´migl´y-Rydz assumed the same title on the very day that had been associated with Pil´sudski. The fact that the event was accompanied by much military pageantry was a further strengthening of the notion of 11 November as the product of military efforts directed by the devotees of Pil´sudski who, now in the person of S´migl´y-Rydz, were still watching over the fortunes of Poland.77 This effort at symbolically transferring the charisma of Pil´sudski to S´migl´y-Rydz was at best a partial success: even old comradesin-arms resented this too rapid elevation, which was for many a ‘profanation of Pil´sudski’s memory’ rather than its institutionalization.78 The intended meaning of this ceremony was conveyed by an anonymous contemporary painting entitled The Apotheosis of Józef Pil´sudski. Three figures are displayed against a dark background. At the centre, slightly elevated, is Pil´sudski, staring directly ahead. In his right hand he holds the White Eagle of Poland, which stands astride a globe rotated to present Poland, enormously enlarged, in the centre. Accepting the globe is President Ignacy Mos´cicki, who is below Pil´sudski and to his right. Mos´cicki’s expression, unlike the fixed stare of the marshal, is rather wistful. On the same plane as Mo´scicki, and hence to the lower left of Pil´sudski, is S´migl´y-Rydz, he is receiving, rather clumsily, the marshal’s baton from Pil´ sudski. Like Mos´cicki, he stares, benignly, into space. Gracing Pil´sudski’s shoulders are what appear to be angel wings, though the nimbus that enshrouds him prevents complete discernment. Five of the great warrior kings of Polish history float just over Pil´sudski’s shoulder but hovering nearest is Kos´ciuszko, literally at the ear of the marshal. Quite apart from the obvious graphic trinitarianism, we see the entrusting of the state by Pil´sudski to Mos´cicki and military responsibility to S´migl´ yRydz, each with an appropriate symbol. Whereas Pil´sudski has already risen to the exalted ranks of the royal shades, he communes most closely with Kos´ciuszko, who was linked to Pil´sudski since the historical genealogy of the Legion era.79 Whereas the canvas is dark, Pil´sudski is lucent and he alone stares

Pil´ sudski and the Politics of Symbolism 115

arrestingly at the viewer. He has centred Polish history and represents the link between the glories of the past and the present. No longer fully of the earth, he has not become only a shade but remains a powerful, indeed seraphic, presence guiding Poland. Although artistically quite dreadful, the painting is politically the perfect post-Pil´sudski evocation of 11 November. The decision to elevate S´migl´ y-Rydz to the rank of marshal on that day is here elaborately explained in symbol.80 S´migl´ y-Rydz is linked via Pil´sudski to Kos´ciuszko, and hence Pil´sudski’s main role is transformed from the embodiment of the Polish tradition to its demiurge. The final step in the process of institutionalizing the linkage between Independence Day and Pil´sudski was on 23 April 1937, when the following law was adopted: The date of November 11 as the anniversary of the Polish Nation regaining independent state existence and as the day for all time associated with the great name Józef Pil´sudski, victorious Leader of the Nation in the Struggle for Freedom of the fatherland, is the date for celebrating Independence Day.81 This decree is reflected in the film Sztandar Wolnos´ci (Banner of Freedom), released in 1937. It is a cinematic presentation of the Pil´sudski legend and the centrality of 11 November through the use of documentary footage with spare narration. Ostensibly the film is a history of the origins of modern Poland in the struggle for independence since 1863; in reality, it is rather a highly interpretive presentation of the era stressing only the Pil´ sudskiite element. It is preceded by a text which concludes its analysis of the Polish struggle for independence: ‘And always at the forefront was the same man in a grey uniform, with his brow furrowed by great care, his eagle eye fixed on the distant future’.82 The film begins with massed cavalry on review under Pil´sudski in the early 1930s. Stressing the current strength and success of Poland, exemplified by this military might, the film begins a retrospective journey through the late nineteenth century in which Pil´sudski and his devotes dominate, virtually to the exclusion of all other groups and factions. As the film’s chronology reaches late 1918 it creates an extraordinary series of images to mark the transition from the war to the reborn Polish state. As we reach the autumn of 1918, the strains of the national anthem are heard and they grow in volume as marching troops are shown, followed by still pictures of Pil´sudski gazing at us with a penetrating stare. Then the screen is filled with the words: ‘11 November 1918’ superimposed over the version of the Polish eagle worn by the Pil´sudski Legions of the First World War. This eagle emblem is transformed into that of the Second Republic and the word ‘Poland’ fills the screen, followed by ‘Free and Independent’. Finally Pil´sudski’s distinctive powerful profile is blended with the outlines of the eagle to make the two images one and

116 The Legacy of the National State

inseparable. This is a very powerful and ingenious series of interpositions and woven symbols, and is the epitome of the entire film. Pil´sudski and his Legions created Poland; he is Poland and has become part of it. The film has blended the biography of Pil´sudski, the conspiratorial–martial tradition, the anthem, and the eagle symbols quite deftly to make it clear that the transition from struggle to the victory of independence has only one possible explanation: 11 November is the central, linking symbol between sacrifice and victory – the tribulation of the past and the glory of the present. Thus by 1939 the invention of a Pil´ sudskiite Poland, with 11 November its central symbol, was well established. The war, and subsequent Communist occupation, submerged but did not destroy this conception of Polish history and politics, which was consciously resurrected by the authorities of postCommunist Poland after 1989. In that year 11 November was restored as the national holiday. All the major candidates for the 2005 presidential election gave Józef Pil´sudski as their choice for the model Polish statesman, and his name is now everywhere after decades of suppression. Does this mean that the Second Republic has been revived or merely invoked? Is contemporary Poland the reanimated version of the Pil´ sudskiite creation that was overwhelmed but perhaps not destroyed after 1939? The historian Janusz Pajewski, whose extraordinarily longevity allowed him to outlast Communism, recalled his youth in 1918: People, who like me, lived through those wonderful never to be forgotten November days of 1918, see in Józef Pil´sudski . . . the vision of ‘Poland Resurrecting,’ the vision of ‘Poland Resurrected’. People who lived through the victorious war in defence of the freshly regained Independence discern in Józef Pil´sudski the victorious Leader, who adorned Polish standards with laurels the like of which it had not known since the era of Chocim and Vienna. Today’s generation certainly cannot understand what the ‘Vision of Poland Resurrecting’ meant for us. But for everyone, Józef Pil´sudski is a figure in Polish history who devoted the work and effort of his whole life to Poland, who, his entire life, taught national dignity and national pride, who taught contempt for those who would bow to the East or the West, who taught, ‘to be defeated and not give up is victory, but to win and rest on your laurels is defeat’. He was often defeated, but he never surrendered. Complete with the Christian religious symbolism, geopolitical presuppositions and martial references, Pajewski has expressed the essential Pil´ sudskiite understanding of 11 November. Fittingly, Polish Radio recently described Pil´sudski’s grave as a ‘shrine’.83 Religion and politics again are interpenetrated; again we witness the sacralization of 11 November and all its trappings together with its patron. What it means for contemporary Poland is uncertain.

Pil´ sudski and the Politics of Symbolism 117

Notes 1 This is part of a larger study now in preparation devoted to the significance of 11 November in the formation of Polish political consciousness since 1918. I should like to thank Jadwiga M. Biskupska of Yale University for editorial assistance in the preparation of this chapter. 2 Some have speculated that national holidays in Poland have a different psychosocial function than in the West. Joyful in the West, in Poland they are really remembrances of national martyrology and hence sombre. Those who find such explanations too cosmic may prefer the explanation that 11 November has traditionally lacked an enthusiastic following in Poland because the weather in that month is often unpleasant; see Mariola Flis, ‘Smutni w s´wie to?’, Dziennik Polski, 12 November 1998; a meteorological exegesis is provided by Zdzisl aw Kos´cielak, ´ ‘Smuta narodowa’, Wprost, 17 November 2002. 3 Pil´ sudski concluded that the most appropriate ‘date for the creation of the Polish state’ was 28 November; see ‘Pierwsze dni Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej: Wykl ad pier´ wszy’, in Józef Pil sudski, Pisma zbiorowe, vol. 8 (Warsaw: Instytut Józefa Pil sudskiego, ´ ´ 1937), p. 105. 4 Adam Próchnik, Powstanie pan´stwa polskiego (Warsaw: Warszawska spóldziel´ nia ksie garska, 1939). Some of the most devoted lieutenants of Pil sudski argued that ´ not until the decisive victory over the Russians in 1920 could true independence be established; see Wacl´ aw Lipin´ski, ‘O dzieje odbudowy pan´stwa polskiego’, Niepodlegl´ os´c´ 6 (2) (1932), 161–76. 5 See M.B. Biskupski, ‘The Militarization of the Discourse of Polish Politics and the Legion Movement of the First World War’, in David Stefancic, Armies in Exile (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 71–101. 6 Pil´ sudski’s political opponents were slow to realize how his arrest by the Germans had freed him from the awkward political baggage of his close association with the Central Powers during the war; see Ryszard Wojdalin´ski, ‘Jeszcze o powstaniu . Tymczasowego Rza du Ludowego (7.XI.1918)’, Spotkania: Niezalezne pismo m´lodych katolików 7–8 (1979), 63. 7 Remarks of Wojciech Roszkowski in ‘Independence Day Broadcast’, Polish Radio, English-language service, Monday, 11 November 2002. 8 Quoted in Anna M. Cienciala, ‘11 listopada 1918 roku: Józef Pil sudski i niepodlegl os´c´ ´ ´ Polski’, Przegla d a Polski (8 November 2002). Online at www.dziennik.com-Przeglad Polski, p. 3. . 9 This according to Adam Koc, inter alia; see Wacl aw Jedrzejewicz, Kronika zycia ´ Józefa Pil´sudskiego, 1867–1935. Tom pierwszy, 1867–1920 (London: Polish Cultural Foundation, 1977), p. 387. 10 For example in his meeting with the German Soldiers’ Council early in the morning of 11 November; see Je drzejewicz, Kronika, p. 389. 11 Piotr Lossowski, Jak Feniks z popiol´ów: Oswobodzenie ziem polskich spod okupacji . w listopadzie 1918 (Lowicz: Mazowiecka Wyzsza Szkol´ a HumanistycznoPedagogiczna, 1998), p. 9. 12 Tomasz Nalecz, ´¸ Polska Organizacja Wojskowa, 1914–1918 (Wrocl´ aw: Ossolineum, 1984), p. 170ff. 13 Lossowski, Jak Feniks, p. 27ff. 14 The disarming of the Germans throughout Poland and the establishment of Polish authority in November is a very complex story which has produced a large literature; see the summary in Piotr Lossowski and Piotr Stawecki, Listopad 1918

´

´

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118 The Legacy of the National State

15

16

17 18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32

33

we wspomnieniach i relacjach (Warsaw: Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej, 1988), pp. 5ff; Norbert Michta, Polityczne uwarunkowania narodzin Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej . (listopad 1918–styczen´ 1919 (Warsaw: Ksia zka i Wiedza, 1980), pp. 57ff. Marceli Handelsman insisted upon this many years ago as the central event in a welter of factors which, in essence, made Poland free; see his ‘Odka d Polska jest pa´nstwem niepodlegl´ ym?’, Niepodleg´los´c´, vol. 5, p. 305. A Pil´ sudskiite source certainly makes this claim; see Wacl´ aw Lipin´ski, Walka zbrojna o niepodlegl´os´c´ Polski w latach 1905–1918 (Warsaw: Volumen, 1990[1935]), pp. 169ff. Lubomirski made these remarks in 1923; see Andrzej Garlicki, Józef Pil´ sudski, 1867–1935 (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1990), p. 202. The regents made it clear that he was being appointed only to command the armed forces, nothing more, on 11 November; see Daria and Tomasz Nal e cz, ‘Józef ´ Pil sudski, Naczelnik Pan´stwa, 22 XI 1918–14 XII 1922’, in Andrzej Chojnowski ´ and Piotr Wróbel, eds, Prezydenci i premierzy Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej (Wrocl´ aw: Ossolineum, 1992), p. 22. A good summary of Pil sudski’s actions is Wl odzimierz Suleja, Józef Pil´sudski ´ ´ (Wrocl aw: Ossolineum, 1995), pp. 174ff. ´ Halina Janowska and Tadeusz Je druszczak, eds, Powstanie II Rzeczypospolitej: Wybór dokumentów (Warsaw: Ludowa spól dzielnia wydawnicza, 1984), p. 440. ´ Powstanie, pp. 441–2; cf. Daria Nal ecz and Tomasz Nal ecz, Józef Pil´sudski – legendy ´ ´ i fakty (Warsaw: Ml odziez·owa Agencja Wydawnicza, 1986), p. 22. ´ For the decree of 22 November see K.W. Kumaniecki, Odbudowa pan´stwowos´ci polskiej. Najwazniejsze dokumenty 1912–styczen´ 1924 (Warsaw: J. Czernecki, 1924), p. 136. From a July 1923 speech by Pil´ sudski reprinted in Z. Zygmuntowicz, ed., Józef Pil´ sudski o sobie (Warsaw: Omnipress, 1989 [1929]), p. 91. Nal ecz, ‘Pil´ sudski’, p. 22. ´ M.B. Biskupski, ‘Paderewski as Leader of American Polonia, 1914–1918’, Polish American Studies 18 (1) (1986), 37–56. Wojdalin´ski, ‘Jeszcze o powstaniu Tymczasowego Rza du Ludowego (7.XI.1918)’, pp. 63–4. Bolesl´ aw Wieniawa-Dl´ ugoszowski, Wymarsz i inne wspomnienia (Warsaw: Biblioteka Wie zi, 1992), p. 229. See Liliana Osses Adams, ‘Jan Lechón, poeta romantyczny’, Zwoje 3 (28), 2001, online at http://www.zwoje.com/zwoje28text04.htm, 6–7 (of 36). See Wincenty Solek, Pamie tnik legionisty (Warsaw: Instytut Wydawniczy Pax, 1988), p. 252. Marian Romeyko, Przed i po maju, 3rd edn (Warsaw: Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej, 1967), p. 81. Irena Panenkowa as early as 1922 described the Pil sudskiites as those who ´ regarded their hero as ‘the creator of Polish independence, the moral ideal, a living standard, a symbol, the greatest contemporary Pole, and one of the greatest, and possible simply the greatest Pole in history’; quoted in Nal ecz, Pil´ sudski, ´ pp. 9–10. This characterization, the authors argue, remained accurate two generations later. The marshal of the Sejm made a speech marking the anniversary of independence to open the parliament on 12 November 1919; see Sprawozdanie stenograficzne z 97 posiedzenia Sejmu Ustawodawczego z dnia 12 listopada 1919r., p. 1. See Zygmunt Kaczmarek, Marszal´ kowie Senatu II Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo sejmowe, 1992), p. 86.

Pil´ sudski and the Politics of Symbolism 119 34 For the ‘national gift’ of 1919 as well as comments about the 1920 conferral of the ‘bul´ awa’ symbolizing his new rank of Marshal see Bolesl´ aw Limanowski, Pamie tnik, 1919–1928 (Warsaw: Ksia zka i Wiedza, 1973), pp. 21, 42; cf. Wacl aw Je drzejewicz ´ . and Janusz Cisek, eds, Kalendarium zycia Józefa Pil´ sudskiego, 1867–1935. Tom II, 1918–1926 (Wroc´l aw: Ossolineum, 1994), p. 217. 35 Je drzejewicz and Cisek, Kalendarium, II, 270. 36 The parliamentary proceedings contain no commemorative remarks for either 1920 or 1921; see Sprawozdanie stenograficzne Sejmu Ustawodawczego for 11 November 1920 and the sessions of 8 and 15 November 1921. 37 Independence Day celebrations of 1922–24 were minimal. In 1923 serious rioting swept through Poland in November; several regions were briefly placed under martial law. The most dramatic events were in Krakow, where a number of soldiers were killed in clashes with rioters. 38 Wincenty Witos, Moja tul´aczka, 1933–1939 (Warsaw: Ludowa spól´ dzielnia wydawnicza, 1967), p. 116. 39 Je drzejewicz and Cisek, Kalendarium, II, pp. 379–80. . 40 Wacl aw Je drzejewicz, Kronika zycia Józefa Pil´ sudskiego, 1867–1935. Tom drugi, ´ 1921–1935 (London: Polska Fundacja Kulturalna, 1977), pp. 186–7; Je drzejewicz and Cisek, Kalendarium, II, p. 410. For discussion see Joseph Rothschild, Pil´ sudski’s Coup d’Etat (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), pp. 38–40. 41 Romeyko noted this some years ago; Przed i po maju, p. 84n. 42 Je drzejewicz and Cisek, Kalendarium, III, p. 56. 43 Ibid, pp. 56–7. 44 Maciej Rataj, Pamietniki (Warsaw: Ludowa spól´ dzielnia wydawnicza, 1965), p. 442. 45 This was Pil sudski’s first live radio broadcast. The on-location broadcast from ´ the Belvedere Palace in Warsaw was a very daunting technical undertaking for Polish radio; see Maciej Józef Kwiatkowski, Narodziny polskiego radia: radiofonia w Polsce w latach 1918–1929 (Warsaw: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1972), pp. 410–11. 46 The fairy tale is a continuous series of symbols, colours, names, places, and of course dates, many referring to specific events in 1914–18. For the document see ‘Przemówienie przez radio w ósma rocznice odzyskania niepodlegl´ os´ci (11 listopada 1926)’ in Pisma zbiorowe 9, pp. 48–52. 47 The contemporary reaction to Pil sudski’s address was puzzlement: ‘[it made] the ´ most bizarre impression. . . something was not right here people said pointing to their heads’, mused Rataj. See Rataj, Pamie tniki, p. 442; cf. the comments in Jedrzejewicz and Cisek, Kalandarium, III, pp. 56–7. 48 Regarding the elevation of both days, see the comments by Andrzej Garlicki, ‘Spory o niepodlegl os´c´’, in Rok 1918: tradycje i oczekiwania (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1978), ´ pp. 30–31. Garlicki characteristically attributes the meanest possible motives to both Pil´ sudski and his entourage. 49 An excellent discussion of this theme is Alina Kowalczykowa, Pil´ sudski i tradycja (Chotomów: Verba, 1991), pp. 169ff. and passim. 50 See Andrzej Friszke, O ksztalt niepodlegl´ej (Warsaw: Biblioteka Wiezi, 1989), p. 72ff. 51 Wojciech Kossak, of the famous family of artists, painted the best-known of all pictures of Pil´ sudski astride Kasztanka, on Independence Day, 1927. However, shortly after the session the horse suffered an accident and had to be destroyed. See Je drzejewicz and Cisek, Kalandarium, III, pp. 93–4. 52 Kaczmarek, Marszal´kowie Senatu, p. 73. 53 Ibid., p. 93.

120 The Legacy of the National State 54 See the entries in Je drzejewicz and Cisek, Kalendarium, III, pp. 131–2. 55 Aleksandra Pil´ sudska, Wspomnienia (London: Gryf, 1960), p. 356; Janusz Je drzejewicz, · W Sl´ uzbie idei: Fragmenty pamie tnika i pism (London: Oficyna poetów i malarzy, 1972), pp. 190ff. 56 Adam Ludwik Korwin-Sokol´ owski, Fragmenty wspomnien´, 1910–1945 (Paris: Editions Spotkania, 1985), p. 109. 57 See Je drzejewicz, Kronika, Vol. I pp. 257ff.; 285–6; 320–21; 346–7; 377; 408; 427; 465. 58 Mieczysl aw Lepecki, Pamie tnik adiutanta Marszal´ ka Pil´ sudskiego (Warsaw: Pan´stwowe ´ Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1987). 59 The Independence Day celebrations of 1929–33 presented no new features from those already begun after Pil sudski’s return to power in 1926. See Je drzejewicz and ´ Cisek, Kalandarium, Vol. II, pp. 167, 200, 232, 257, 294–5. 60 The political columnist of the Warsaw daily, Nasz Przegla d, Bernard Singer, has left a very acute portrait of the Independence Day observations of the 1930s in essay ‘Do kogo?’ published 12 November 1934 and reprinted in Bernard Singer, Od Witosa do Sl´awka (Paris: Instytut Literacki, 1962), pp. 212–15. 61 Pil sudski was in such poor health that his attendance was unsure until the last ´ moment. He had instructed Gen. Edward S´migl y-Rydz to be ready to stand in for him. ´ Pil´ sudski apparently personally planned the military review; see Jedrzejewicz, Kronika, 2, pp. 493–4; c.f. Lepecki, Pamie tnik, 237ff. The front page of the illustrated weekly, Kurjer Poranny, showed a strikingly vigorous Pil sudski on the grand´ stand reviewing the troops. In reality he was in need of his adjutant’s support to get through the day and was exhausted for several days thereafter; see the first page of Kurjer Poranny, ‘Dodatek do No. 320’. 62 Pil sudski’s rambling observations made just four days before the 11 November ´ military review are recorded in Korwin-Sokol owski, Fragmenty, pp. 122–3. It is not ´ surprising that one of the radical authoritarian Pil´ sudskiite political groupings in the 1930s called itself ‘11 November’; see Edward D. Wynot, Jr, Polish Politics in Transition: The Camp of National Unity and the Struggle for Power, 1935–1939 (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1974), p. 42. 63 Gazeta Polska, 10 November 1935, p. 1. The drawing was by Gl owacki. The Gazeta ´ Polska was a Pil sudskiite organ edited by one of the late Marshal’s most devoted, ´ and controversial lieutenants, Bogusl´ aw Miedzin´ski. 64 ‘Akademje’, Gazeta Polska, 11 November 1918, p. 4. See also the other articles for this day carried in Gazeta Polska. 65 ‘W przededniu S´wieta Niepodlegl o´sci’, Gazeta Polska, 10 November 1935, 6; ´ ‘Pochód do Belwederu’, and ‘Hol d armji’, Gazeta Polska, 10 November 1935, p. 4. ´ 66 ‘Przemówienie prezydenta miasta’, Gazeta Polska, 11 November 1935, p. 4. 67 ‘Przemówienie prezydenta miasta St. Starzyn´skiego’, Gazeta Polska, 12 November 1935, p. 8. Starzyn´ski was completely under the spell of Pil´ sudski and, in the words of one old comrade he ‘could see no future without him [Pil sudski]’; see Zygmunt ´ Zaremba, Wojna i konspiracja (London: S´widerski, 1957), pp. 72–3. 68 Starzyn´ski had been an officer in Pil´ sudski’s ‘Pierwsza Brygada’ during the First World War. His heroic service as mayor of Warsaw during the German invasion of 1939 has won him great respect; see Edward Henzel, ‘Stefan Starzyn´ski: Niezl´ omny Prezydent Warszawy’, Zwoje 7 (11), 1998, online at http://www.zwoje.com/zwoje11/ text11htm. 69 See ‘Program dzisiejszych uroczystos´ci’, Gazeta Polski, 10 November 1935, p. 4; ‘Rewja wojsk w dniu S´wieta Niepodlegl os´ci’ complete with a picture of S´migl y-Rydz on ´ ´ the reviewing stand in Gazeta Polska, 12 November 1935, p. 1. (As regards Pil sudski’s

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Pil´ sudski and the Politics of Symbolism 121

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72 73 74 75 76

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79

opinion of S´migl y-Rydz, see his oft-quoted glowing 1922 evaluation quoted in ´ Piotr Stawecki, Sl´ownik biograficzny generalów wojska polskiego, 1918–1939 (Warsaw: Wojskowy Instytut Historyczny, 1994), pp. 15–16); ‘Zbiórka organizacji spol´ ecznych na pl. J. Pil sudskiego’, Gazeta Polska, 11 November 1935, p. 4. A valuable recent essay ´ on this theme is Wiesl aw Jan Wysocki, ‘Marszal ek Józef Pil sudski a Edward ´ ´ ´ ´ Smigl y-Rydz’, in Adam Suchon´ski, Pil´sudski i jego wspól´ pracownicy (Opole: ´ ´ Uni.wersytet Opolski, 1999) pp. 105–13. That Pil sudski had decided Smigl ´ ´y-Rydz would be his military successor was bruited in the Polish press before the Marshal’s death; see Singer, Od Witosa, p. 214. ‘Dzisiejsze uroczystos´ci na Pradze’; ‘Odznaczeni w dniu S´wieta Niepodl egl os´ci’; ´ ´ ‘Odznaczenia zl otym krzyz· em zasl ugi’, Gazeta Polska, 10 November 1935, p. 6; ´ ´ ‘Uroczystos´c´ w M.S. Wojsk.’, Gazeta Polska, 11 November 1935, p. 2; ‘Rewja wojsk na polu Mokotowskiem’, Gazeta Polska, 12 November 1935, p. 12. See ‘Odsl´ onie cie popiersia Marszal ka Pil´ sudskiego w lokalu cechów warszawskich’ ´ and ‘Odsl onie cie pomnika Marszal ka Pil sudskiego w Rembertowie’, both in ´ ´ ´ Gazeta Polska, 11 November 1935, p. 7. ‘Audycje radjowe w dniach 17-ej Rocznicy Niepodlegl os´ci’, Gazeta Polska, 11 ´ November 1935, p. 8. ‘Nowy listopad’, Gazeta Polska, 11 November 1935, p. 1. Piotr Cichoracki, Z nami jest On: Kult Marszal´ ka Józefa Pil´ sudskiego w Wojsku Polskim w latach 1926–1939 (Wrocl aw: Ossolineum, 2001). ´ Ibid., p. 18. S´migl y-Rydz was promoted to ‘general broni’, i.e. a three-star general officer, on ´ 10 November and hours later on 11 November was given the baton of Marshal of Poland. (Some sources suggest that both promotions occurred on the 11th.) Also on 11 November 1936 Kazimierz Sosnkowski, who had shared Pil sudski’s Magdeburg ´ imprisonment, was promoted to general broni. Both Sosnkowski and S´migl y´ Rydz had been in rank as two-star generals (general dywizji) since 1 June 1919. Sosnkowski was probably Pil sudski’s closest military collaborator until 1926, after ´ which the two were rather alienated. The government did this, it seems, to distract in some measure from the unseemly haste with which S´migl y-Rydz was ´ advanced; see Wacl aw Je drzejewicz, Wspomnienia (Wroclaw: Ossolineum, 1993), ´ p. 271. Regarding the. dates of service for the two generals see Tadeusz KryskaKarski and Stanisl´ aw Z urakowski, General´ owie Polski niepodlegl´ ej (Warsaw: Editions Spotkania, 1991), pp. 19 and 26. See Wynot, Polish Politics in Transition, p. 64ff. A fascinating view of how this appeared from the perspective of the political left is furnished by Janusz . Zarnowski, Polska Partia Socjalistyczna w latach 1935–1939 (Warsaw: Ksia zka i Wiedza, 1965), p. 155. Many of the most devoted Pil sudskiites were appalled by ´ S´migl y-Rydz’s elevation to the rank of marshal regarding it as usurping a status of ´ which only Pil sudski was worthy; see Je drzejewicz, W Sl´uz· bie idei, pp. 223–4; c.f. ´ the remarks of his brother, also a devoted Pil sudskiite, in Jedrzejewicz, Wspomnienia, ´ p. 271. Allies of the new marshal thought he spoke with unusual eloquence on this day, the zenith of his career; see Henryk Gruber, Wspomnienia i uwagi (London: Gryf, [1968]) p. 360. See Hanna and Tadeusz Je druszczak, Ostatnie lata Drugiej Rzeczypospolitej (1935–1939) (Warsaw: Ksiazka i Wiedza, 1979), pp. 228–9. A fellow officer referred to S´migl y-Rydz ´ . as becoming a Marshal ‘on credit’; see Stanisl´ aw Kopan´ski, Moja sl´uzba w Wojsku Polskim, 1917–1939 (London: Veritas, 1965), p. 236. Biskupski, ‘Militarization of the Discourse’, p. 74.

122 The Legacy of the National State 80 A handsome reproduction of the painting can be found in Rzecz najwie ksza – Polska II Rzeczpospolita, 1918–1939 (Warsaw: Muzeum Niepodlegl os´ci, 1998), plate 47. ´ The history of the canvas’s display is not known. It is currently on display at the Muzeum Niepodlegl os´ci in Warsaw and has frequently been reproduced since the ´ fall of Communism. The Museum has attributed the date of 1935 to the canvas which is almost certainly incorrect as it was obviously inspired by the elevation of S´migl y-Rydz – and hence the depiction of handing over the Marshal’s baton – in ´ November 1936. 81 Dziennik ustaw RP, 30 April 1937, note 33. I should like to thank Wojciech Materski of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Polska Akademia Nauk) for providing this information to me. 82 Sztandar Wolnos´ci, 1937, Falanga, distributed by Patria-Film (Warsaw), directed by Ryszard Ordyn´ski with Marja Jehanne Wielopolska and Halina Ostrowska-Grabska, Music by Jan Maklewicz. Ordy´ nski was a well-established and highly regarded director whose several films included the 1928 Pan Tadeusz which Pil sudski, as we ´ have noted, saw on the Independence Day ceremonies of that year. 83 See the remarks by Krystyna Kol osowska in ‘Independence Day Broadcast’, Polish ´ Radio, English-language service, 11 November 2002.

8 An Ethnic Poland: a Failure of National Self-determination John J. Kulczycki

National self-determination: the concept The concept of national self-determination combines the ideas of democracy with those of nationalism. Both have a common source in the French Revolution of 1789, which first articulated the principles of a democratic national government. Whereas initially the democratic element predominated, that is ‘the right by people to choose their own type of governments’,1 in the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in practice it came to mean the right of nations to have their own state. Considerations of international peace as well as democracy suggested attention to the right of nations to their own state. Unresolved demands for national self-determination seemed to be a destabilizing force in international politics and even a cause of the First World War. During the war the idea of national self-determination became the focus of widespread discussion and a propaganda tool against the enemy. Before the war ended, President Woodrow Wilson saw the promotion of national self-determination as his mission and that of his country. As a result, national self-determination ‘received full global acceptability during the post-World War I period’.2 The inability to apply the principle of national self-determination perfectly in all cases logically raised the question of the fate of the resulting national minorities. One means of preventing minorities from disturbing the peace involved their permanent resettlement. A convention between Greece and Turkey concluded at Lausanne in January 1923 dropped all pretence of self-determination by making the exchange compulsory. National self-determination was reduced to a nationalist form without a democratic content. The widespread acceptance of the principle of national selfdetermination allowed Hitler to cloak his aggressive demands for Czechoslovak territory in the mantle of righteousness. Yet, despite Hitler’s abuse of the concept, statesmen continued to see national self-determination as a component of the creation of a more peaceful world. This chapter looks at the application of the principle of national self-determination in Poland in 123

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the postwar era, when the country’s geographical configuration differed from what it had been before the war.

Polish Communists and national self-determination Alfred Lampe, a leading prewar Polish Communist, published on 5 March 1943 an article entitled ‘Freedom is Indivisible’ invoking the principle of national self-determination in which he wrote: Inscribing our banners with the slogan of the freedom and independence of Poland, seeking the unification and rebirth of the Polish nation in its own state, standing on the principle that the Polish nation, and not someone else, should decide the fate of the Polish nation and the Polish state – we at the same time support the freedom, independence, and national unification of neighbouring fraternal nations3 In another article published in April 1943, he stated unambiguously: ‘The rebuilt Polish state will be a nation-state.’4 In June 1943, the declaration passed at the first congress of the Union of Polish Patriots formed by Polish Communists in the Soviet Union sketched the outline of the territorial changes, which would bring about the ‘unification’ of the Polish nation Lampe referred to. The Communists in occupied Poland who created the Polish Workers’ Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza – PPR) in January 1942 took a similar, if less explicit, position in the PPR programme ‘What Are We Fighting For?’, published in Warsaw in November 1943, in a section under the heading ‘All Polish lands must be united with the Polish State’. On 22 July 1944, Polish Communists and their allies meeting in Moscow formed the Polish Committee of National Liberation (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego – PKWN), which declared itself to be the government of Poland. On 27 July, the PKWN signed a secret agreement with the Soviet government accepting the so-called Curzon line, with minor changes, as the border between the two countries. By the agreement, Poland lost just over 46 per cent of its prewar territory, leaving millions of ethnic Poles in the Soviet Union.5 As a result, the PKWN signed agreements for an exchange of population with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic on 9 September, and with the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic on 22 September 1944.6 In all three agreements, the parties contracted ‘to begin the evacuation of all Poles and Jews who were Polish citizens until 17 September 1939 . . . and want to resettle in the territory of Poland’. The agreements emphasized the voluntary nature of the resettlement: ‘The evacuation is voluntary, and therefore coercion either direct or indirect cannot be applied.’7 Later, an agreement signed on 6 July 1945 by the governments of Poland and the Soviet Union extended the right of resettlement to Poland to former Polish citizens residing in the rest of the Soviet

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Union, which benefited primarily those who had been deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan in 1940–41. The Polish authorities officially referred to the process of population transfer as ‘repatriation’, signalling its nationalist justification; however, the vast majority of those who were to be ‘repatriated’ were not returning to their homeland. They were more likely to feel that they were leaving their homeland rather than returning to it. At issue here were two different concepts of ‘homeland’, two different roles played by territory in national identity.8 For many people, the tie between culture and territory is what creates a ‘homeland’, makes it part of the cultural identity, and gives it emotive power. In the rhetoric of the Polish and Soviet authorities, the territory of the state delimited the ‘homeland’. In this way, homeland became an attribute of the state instead of the nation.9 Thus the ‘reparation’ involved moving people from one concept of a ‘homeland’ to another. The Polish Communist authorities would seek to give the newly defined Polish ‘homeland’ (and therefore the state) emotive power by identifying it with the supposedly ethnically homogeneous Poland of the Piast dynasty that at one time ruled over territory with a roughly similar western border in the eleventh century.10

‘Repatriation’ from the Soviet Union The agreements between the Polish and Soviet authorities had to be repeatedly extended due to various factors that delayed the resettlement. Nevertheless, the ‘exchange’ of population left a substantial portion of the ‘Polish nation’, as imagined by the Polish authorities, in the Soviet Union, outside the borders of the intended Polish nation-state. According to one estimate, Poland’s ‘Lost Lands’ had 2.7 million ethnically Polish inhabitants, constituting nearly one-third (31 per cent) of the total population of the territory.11 Moreover, those eligible for ‘repatriation’ emphatically did not include the prewar ethnically Polish citizens of the Soviet Union, whose number the Polish authorities before the war estimated at 1.15 million.12 The PKWN did not seek the ‘repatriation’ of these Poles, which would have put it on a collision course with its Soviet patron. Thus the Communist-dominated Polish government itself limited its vision of which Poles their fatherland should encompass. The results of the ‘evacuation’ of the eligible Polish population varied from one Soviet republic to another. On 12 November 1946, the Polish embassy in Moscow reported to the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the Lithuanian authorities regarded ‘repatriation’ as over. Statistics vary, but according to the final protocol of the agreement between Poland and Soviet Lithuania, the ‘repatriated’ constituted 45.1 per cent of those who registered for departure. Another source gives a higher figure, but even so ‘repatriation’ from Soviet Lithuania remained far from complete at the end of the process. Similarly, in Belarus, only about half (53–55 per cent) of those registered actually resettled in Poland. Ukraine presents a very different picture. In a memorandum to

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the Soviet leadership, including Joseph Stalin, dated 31 October 1946, the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that 90.6 per cent of those eligible and 91.9 per cent of those who registered left Ukraine for the new Poland.

Objective obstacles to ‘repatriation’ from the Soviet Union The report that the Soviet people’s commissar of internal affairs submitted to Molotov on 28 February 1946 cited the shortage of railway cars as the main hindrance to the resettlement of the Poles. The attitudes of Soviet officials posed another obstacle to ‘repatriation’ of all Poles eligible. From the very beginning the Soviet authorities gave priority to security considerations. Worse, local Soviet officials did not always strictly follow central directives: often arbitrary and/or corrupt, sometimes hostile toward the Polish population, at times simply incompetent, they often stood in the way of resettlement. Soviet officials saw the rural population as a valuable resource. While they clearly wanted to de-Polonize large urban centres such as Wilno and Lwów, they sought to limit the departure of the rural population, which would adversely affect agricultural production. Some officials even threatened to arrest applicants or draft them for forced labour. As a result, in some regions people who registered for ‘evacuation’ requested that their names be removed from the lists. Soviet authorities also required documents indicating nationality, documents that a large percentage of the Polish inhabitants, particularly in rural areas, did not possess. According to an inspector of the Polish office for ‘repatriation’ from Belarus, this requirement prevented thousands of Polish peasant families from resettling in Poland, causing great bitterness among them.13

The influence of subjective factors on ‘repatriation’ from the Soviet Union Poles in the Soviet Union eligible for ‘repatriation’ of course had no say in the border change or in the agreements to exchange populations, and it seems safe to assume that at least initially they did not respond favourably to these decisions. A reluctance to abandon what many of them regarded as their ‘homeland’ probably played a crucial role in the decision of those who refused to leave and in the delay that marked the departure of others. The conflict over the political future of Poland between the PKWN in Lublin and the Polish government-in-exile in London, which for the overwhelming majority of Poles was the legitimate government, heightened the dilemma of those eligible for ‘evacuation’ of whether to remain in what they regarded as their ‘homeland’ or to resettle in what the PKWN defined as their ‘homeland’. On 1 November 1945, about 200 Poles gathered at the tomb containing Józef Pil´sudski’s heart in Wilno and decorated it with a banner that read, ‘We will not leave our fatherland.’14 According to the Belarusian NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs), agents of the London government

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reinforced such attitudes by claiming that England and the USA guaranteed the recreation of Poland within its 1939 borders.15 Uncertainty about the future above all promoted procrastination. On 17 December 1944, after Prime Minister Winston Churchill endorsed in the House of Commons Soviet annexation of Poland’s eastern borderlands, Ryszard Gansiniec, a professor of classical philology at the university in Lwów, wrote in his daily notes to his wife, who had already left for the new Poland: Our bitterness is great. Such are our allies. But no one thinks of running away from Lwów. One thing is certain: Poles will never agree to the partitioning of Poland and the loss of Lwów. And it has become clear that after this war, before it is even over, it will come to a second war; there will be a fight over our land with the Moscovites. To these ranks I will also report; I will remain faithful to the land in which I have lived and worked.16 Gansiniec stayed in Lwów until 10 June 1946, although his family had departed for the new Poland two years earlier. In his daily notes to his wife, he repeatedly refers to his duty as a Pole to remain in Lwów as long as possible. That Poland would be forced to give up its major urban centres in the eastern borderlands, Lwów and Wilno, seemed particularly inconceivable to some.17 Even after the Yalta Conference, the NKGB (the People’s Commissariat of State Security) in Równo quoted on 12 March 1945 a local inhabitant as saying that Poles in Lwów had taken up the slogan ‘Lwów was and will remain a Polish city.’18 News of the decisions at Yalta did not necessarily make it easier to leave. As one individual later put it, ‘So began a struggle of conscience with every Pole who loved his true fatherland, but he loved his native village, where he came into the world, his forests . . . the plot of ground of his ancestors . . . the graves where their remains lie.’19 Some Poles, however, saw the new Poland as a place where they could live among their ‘own’ people, a refuge from violence. In the spring of 1943, while the area was still under German occupation, Ukrainian nationalists initiated a campaign of terror directed against the Polish population of Volhynia with the goal of creating an ethnically homogeneous Ukrainian region as a step towards the creation of an independent Ukraine. This set off a wave of migration of the Polish rural population, fleeing to urban areas and to ethnically Polish areas further west. Ukrainian nationalist partisans continued their campaign against the Polish population after the area came under Soviet control, dovetailing with the official Soviet policy of ‘evacuating’ the region’s Polish population. In fact, particularly in the eastern counties of Volhynia, ‘repatriation’ was nearly universal.20 The experience of the Soviet occupation of 1939–41 also played a role as some saw resettlement as an obvious, if painful, choice to escape a repetition of that experience. One scholar who conducted extensive interviews some 45 years after the war with 30 ‘repatriates’

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found that a decided majority regarded their resettlement in this way.21 Their fears were not without justification. According to a report of an official of the Soviet NKVD, dated 15 April 1945, the number of Polish citizens arrested and sent to detention camps since January amounted to 3461, twothirds of them from the district of Lwów.22 The terror proved largely effective. On 11 January 1945, 24-year-old nativeborn Polish Lvovian Alma Heczko wrote in her diary: Massive arrests since eight days ago. . . . People are seized with panic. They stand in line at the Repatriation Office and sign up for departure for Poland. . . . Rumours are circulating that it is no better in the West. Although we are afraid, we plan to leave. No one knows how long the arrests will continue. We are not guilty of anything for which we could be arrested, but they don’t have to have a reason. Every knock on the door fills me with dread. We are all afraid.23 Nevertheless, the expectation of a new war remained high in Lwów and even intensified, according to Gansiniec. He wrote the following note: on 22 February 1946: ‘Lwów is starting to go mad – in the square there are unheard-of scenes: everyone is buying fat, salt pork, supplies. The word is – war is coming. Prices are rising, the profiteers are having a great holiday’; on 16 April he added: Everyone is waiting for war as for salvation. Previously one prayed: ‘From hunger, pestilence, and war preserve us, Lord’ – today we ask: ‘Send us war, Lord, even if with hunger and pestilence!’ The latest prediction is that there will be a war a year, a month, a day and six hours after the surrender of Germany; that is, supposedly on 17 June.24 On 12 April 1946, the Italian ambassador to Poland reported to his ministry in Rome that apparently agents of the Polish government-in-exile in London had intensified their activity to persuade people not to leave the eastern borderlands by spreading improbable rumours of the approach of a British–Soviet war that would bring about the reunification of the territory with Poland.25 Hysteria peaked in Lwów in May. On 11 May 1946, Gasiniec noted that although the authorities had fenced off the Virgin Mary’s statue in Mary Square, people put flowers at the foot of the statue daily. Then in his notes on 14 May he wrote: ‘Lwów is experiencing mass psychosis’ and reported that there were claims of sightings of Mary in several places in Lwów. At one site, Crowds gathered there, and the militia cordoned it off and beat people – all in vain because everyone wants to see the Mother of God. The militia claims that there is nothing in the window [where the image appeared], that they don’t see anything – and the old women reply: ‘What? She should

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reveal herself to pagans?’ . . . Everyone claims that they see the Mother of God in the window. One has the impression that Lvovians are at the end of their rope and crossed over into the realm of open hallucinations. These visions are connected with the hope of liberation. Because this is possible only after a new war, they conclude that it will soon begin. Meanwhile, diplomats don’t even dream of this.26 When Gansiniec notified the university that he was resettling to Poland, the authorities made offers to him that, if they had been made earlier, he claimed that he would have accepted and stayed on despite the fact that his wife and family had already left for Poland. In a note to his wife, dated 30 May 1946, after asserting his love for her, he added: ‘But with an equal love I also love Poland, and Lwów is now my Poland. With a bleeding heart I view the beauty of this noble city, which is slowly drowning in the barbarian steppe.’ Just over a week before he finally left Lwów, on 10 June 1946, he wrote: ‘I sit in the ashes of my life and feel the longing of someone dying. I didn’t even know how this land bred in my bones, how this city squeezed into my heart. I look at her and cannot understand or believe that I must part with Poland here. This whole “liquidation” looks like cleaning up after the dead.’27 Evidence of how difficult the decision to leave their ‘homeland’ must have been is illustrated by a survey taken in 1977–78 among a representative sample of 1960 individuals who resettled to Poland in the years 1945 to 1948, which found that a significant number left a close family member in the Soviet Union: 2.3 per cent a spouse, 17.1 per cent a parent, and 17.7 per cent a sibling.28

The ‘unrepatriated’ Fear stoked by violence on the part of Ukrainian nationalists and arrests by the Soviet authorities resulted in a much higher rate of ‘repatriation’ from Soviet Ukraine than from the rest of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, even in Soviet Ukraine some of those eligible for resettlement stayed. Earlier, some who refused to resettle simply denied that they were Poles, arguing that they were born in western Ukraine and had no desire to live in a Polish state.29 Passing for Ukrainian to avoid resettlement seems to have been a more common occurrence among Poles than those who insist on the supremacy of allegiance to one’s nation-state over all other considerations would expect. Uncertainty about the future led some to hedge their bets; in June 1946, the NKGB in Drohobycz noted that in some cases only part of a family left for Poland while other family members stayed behind to guard the family’s property.30 An investigation of others who stayed behind found that most did so for family reasons, that is, a spouse with local ethnic ties, or for other practical considerations, such as to continue their education at institutions of higher learning.31 No doubt some who initially decided to stay changed

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their minds and, along with others, found out too late that they could not leave. Some, however, still continued to harbour illusions about the future of their ‘homeland’. As late as mid-April 1947 some Poles were spreading rumours of an imminent war in which England and the USA would force the Soviet Union to restore Poland to its 1939 border, according to the NKGB in Drohobycz.32 In a memorandum dated 4 December 1947, sent to Politburo member Roman Zambrowski, the director of the Foreign Department of the Central Committee of the PPR reported that petitions asking Polish authorities to intervene on behalf of relatives in the Soviet Union who want to resettle in Poland had taken on massive proportions in the second half of 1947. But none of the interventions of the Polish authorities with the Soviet authorities in these individual cases succeeded. As an example, he cited the case of a party member who learned upon return from a German prison camp after the war that his wife had died in Wilno, yet the Lithuanian authorities would not allow his nine-year-old son to resettle in Poland.33 Frustrated in their efforts, some individuals asked for permission to return to their homelands in the Soviet Union so as to be reunited with their families. Statistics vary on how many former Polish citizens eligible for repatriation remained in the Soviet Union. According to a memorandum of February 1947 that the vice chairman of the Polish National Council of the Homeland presented to Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union Molotov, it is estimated that, of those eligible to resettle in Poland under the agreements of 1944 and 1945, 553 800 remained in the Soviet Union.34 One scholar gives a higher estimate of 680 000.35 This means that in the years 1944–48, only about 60 per cent of those eligible under the ‘repatriation’ agreements actually resettled to Poland.36 None of these estimates, however, includes ethnic Poles who held Soviet citizenship before 1939, whom the Polish authorities made virtually no attempt to ‘repatriate’. When an organized ‘repatriation’ again became possible in the years 1956–59, 248 000 ethnic Poles and 18 000 Jews left the Soviet Union for Poland.37

The ‘natives’ of the ‘Recovered Lands’ Just as the Polish authorities sought to ‘repatriate’ all of the Polish population that was eligible under the agreements with Soviet authorities, so too the Polish government sought to retain the ethnically Polish population that resided in the so-called ‘Recovered Lands’, the formerly German territory and the Free City of Danzig that came under Polish administration after the war. A recent study suggests an equivalence between the fate of ‘repatriates’ from the Soviet Union and the German population in the ‘Recovered Lands’.38 In the East, the population could theoretically choose whether to leave or to stay, with eligibility for ‘repatriation’ determined by the Polish authorities in cooperation with the Soviets. In the formerly German territory, however, the fate of the population was largely in the hands of Polish officials.

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The goal of all Polish political camps, Communist and non-Communist, in exile and in the homeland, with regard to the population of the ‘Recovered Lands’ was unequivocal: ‘We don’t want even a single German; we won’t give up even a single Polish soul.’39 Despite centuries of German rule over the territory of the ‘Recovered Lands’ and the German citizenship of its inhabitants, no political leader or publicist doubted that there were large numbers of Poles among the territory’s inhabitants. The universal use of the term ‘autochthon’ or ‘native’ by the Polish authorities and publicists of all political orientations to designate exclusively the inhabitants of the territory presumed to be Polish, as distinguished from the German inhabitants, who were therefore by definition alien intruders, fostered the acceptance of this belief as axiomatic by the rest of the population of Poland. During the war the number of ‘autochthons’ was estimated at 1.5 to 2.3 million.40 Articles in the press claimed that Polish dialects had survived throughout the ‘Recovered Lands’. In a report he submitted after a brief inspection tour, commissioned by the legal department of the Presidium of the Council of Ministers at the end of February and the beginning of March 1945 of areas inhabited by Mazurians, the governor of the province of Warsaw referred to the Mazurians as Polish-speaking and to ‘the necessity of rescuing this population, which despite six hundred years of Germanization did not lose its Polish speech’, although he quotes the Mazurians as saying of themselves, ‘we is Mazurians’ (my som Mazurzy).41 Even those who had not preserved all aspects of their Polish identity were not beyond redemption. The Catholic writer Wl´adysl´aw Grabski proposed in a book he published in 1945 that it was the mission of the Polish nation to liberate ‘the Slavic blood flowing in the veins of Germanized Silesians and Pomeranians, making them abhor the foul poison of Germanism, disinfecting them and returning them to health by teaching them the native tongue in order to incorporate them back into the mother country, not as prodigal sons but as victims rescued from the ultimate outrage’.42 This process of disinfection and restoration to health went by the name of re-Polonization, not Polonization, since it involved a return to the Polish nation, not a denationalization of Germans. With the defeat of Germany, it was expected that the number of inhabitants identifying themselves as Polish would increase. German influences, artificially imposed on the population, would disappear and be replaced with fresh traditions of Polish origin.

The dilemma Polish raison d’état and the social consensus demanded both the widest possible inclusion of German citizens of Polish origin and the strictest exclusion of all Germans. The dilemma, nay, the contradiction lay in the reality of the ‘Recovered Lands’, which did not match the assumptions derived from the ideology of nationalism that underpinned these policies, assumptions that

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state that everyone has a durable national identity and that the presumed members of a nation necessarily share in a stable, palpable, homogeneous national identity, in this case either German or Polish, and that this identity provides a basis for sorting a population, retaining those of the desired nationality and expelling the undesirable. Some ‘natives’ had a primarily regional identity and regarded the question of their nationality as a relatively trivial matter to be changed as practical needs dictated. According to the report of an SS officer in September 1943, as the fortunes of the war turned against Germany, many Mazurians in East Prussia, who had earlier manifested a loyalty to Germany, began to ‘recall’ their Slavic roots and to return to the language of their forefathers.43 Shortly after the end of the war, asked to fill out cards declaring their nationality, inhabitants of one Silesian village showed their pragmatic approach to the question by returning blank cards and explaining that they did not yet know who governed the area – Poles, Russians, or Germans.44 Some, who identified themselves as Polish in 1945, later came to reconsider their choice and to opt for a German identity. In 1945, only months after the end of the war, the sociologist Stanisl´aw Ossowski investigated the question of identity among the inhabitants of one of the largest villages of the Opole region of Silesia, which had the heaviest concentration of so-called ‘autochthons’ in the ‘Recovered Lands’.45 Here he found a different concept of national identity than the one accepted by the Polish authorities and publicists. For a significant majority of people in the area, nationality did not have the character of a permanent trait of an individual but rather something like membership in a political party or acceptance of a political ideology, which might well depend at a particular moment on the balance of political forces well beyond the power of the individual to control or even influence. For them, only their regional Upper Silesian identity had a permanent character that marked them from birth, and this regional identity took precedence over any fleeting national identity.46 In their usage, they applied the terms ‘Pole’ or ‘Polish’ either to someone from Poland (within its prewar borders) or to that minority of local residents who chose to be active in the Polish national movement in Germany.47 Some regional or local identities had more tenuous ties to the hallmarks of the Polish national identity than in Opole Silesia. The Kashubs and Slovins of Pomerania were regarded as Poles though the majority lacked a Polish national consciousness.48 Germanization had progressed much further, for example, among the Mazurians, and their Protestant religion marked them off more sharply from the majority of Poles, many of whom regarded Protestantism with deep hostility after the war as something short of the Nazi ideology.49 Ultimately, the view prevailed that the granting of Polish citizenship to inhabitants of the ‘Recovered Lands’ should occur on a caseby-case basis.

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The consequences of being ‘German’ Late in 1944 and in the first months of 1945, Soviet forces entered and took control of the territory east of the Oder and Neisse Rivers that had been part of the Third Reich. The Red Army regarded all the territory’s inhabitants as German and vented their full fury on the population. Wanton violence, pillage, rape, murder and arson were the order of the day. The Soviet military made no distinction as to nationality. The ‘ethnographically Polish’ inhabitants suffered along with those of German origin. In his investigations among the residents of the Opole region, Ossowski found that when some inhabitants, especially women, referred to the period before the war, they meant the period before December 1944.50 In many areas of the ‘Recovered Lands’, particularly those adjacent to the prewar Polish–German border, the first contact that ‘natives’ had with Poles from Poland, even before the areas came under Polish administration, was with looters. A prewar activist in the Union of Poles in Germany recorded her impressions as follows: Already in March [1945] the first looters appeared in Olsztyn. They loaded everything they could onto trucks and drove away. They went from house to house, looking for treasures. They took the best carpets, china, glass, and pictures from the houses – everything that fell into their hands. Their greed was so great that sometimes they took things that they then discarded in the street, looking for other things.51 Whether the houses were abandoned or occupied, or belonged to Germans or to ‘natives’, the looters asked no questions – they just took what they wanted. The Gazeta Robotnicza claimed in June 1945 that the Polish population of Opole Silesia ‘currently is beginning to disparage Polishness and is filling out forms requesting to be listed as Germans. They don’t want anything to do with those Poles who bring with them the greatest disgrace – looting – to the heroic name of Pole.’52 On the heels of the Soviets and the looters came the Polish security forces and administrators, among them people with little experience and no familiarity with the conditions under which the ‘natives’ had lived under German rule. In Silesia, the Polish Citizens’ Militia and the Office of Public Security sometimes interned whole villages in forced labour camps, including ones where the Silesian Polish dialect predominated. More than ignorance of local conditions marked the performance of some newly appointed officials. Coming from Polish provinces adjacent to the prewar German border, some had ties with the looters who plagued the area and even joined them in plundering what had not already been taken. In a special report to the presidium of the National Council of the Homeland in January 1946, the executive officer of

134 The Legacy of the National State

a county in East Prussia lamented, ‘The Citizens’ Militia . . . allows itself such abuses of authority as ordinary plundering and robbery [and] commits acts of extreme arbitrariness, that in my opinion one should bring indictments against 80 per cent of the functionaries.’53 As a result, in November 1945, the county committee of the Polish Workers’ Party in Opole observed that Silesians ‘see the state authorities as occupiers’.54 In one Silesian county, where the local population originally welcomed the arrival of a Polish administration, this attitude began to change with the detention of ‘natives’ in camps and the arrival of ‘repatriates’ from the East, so that by March 1946, the State Office of Information and Propaganda reported that the ‘natives’ constantly complained that ‘we had it better under the Germans’.55 A decree on land reform designed to win the support of the Polish peasantry issued by the PKWN on 6 September 1944 confiscated not only large estates without compensation but also the property of Germans, traitors and collaborators.56 On the assumption that those who fled the advancing front were Germans, the Communist authorities likewise confiscated vacant or abandoned farms, which, in the Opole region, amounted to at least half of all farms.57 With Poles from central Poland and the East flowing into the territory and taking over what they claimed were ‘German’ farms, often forcibly moving in with the owners on the assumption that the latter would soon be expelled as Germans, much of the native population of the ‘Recovered Lands’ entered into bitter property disputes. In some villages, every single farm had two farmers, a native and a migrant. In the years 1945 to 1948, some 24 000 farms were involved in such disputes. Not until the decree of 6 September 1946 did the Polish government rule that disputed farms not initially abandoned by their owners should remain in the possession of natives who had been certified as being of Polish nationality. This decree, however, did not end all the disputes. As late as 1950, in the province of Olsztyn, several hundred legal proceedings of ‘natives’ with Polish citizenship, demanding the return of their farms taken over by settlers, remained undecided.58 Disputes over the ownership of property took place under the guise of questions of ethnic identity, which even officials at times disputed. In a report to the plenipotentiary of the province of Gdan´sk, dated 31 December 1945, the plenipotentiary of the district of Sztum claimed that ‘many germans [sic] bearing Polish names and trying to speak Polish did not apply for verification or deliberately did not apply in time, waiting for some change in the political situation’. But as they saw that no change was coming, they began applying for verification: ‘This element, despite the pretence of Polishness, does not have anything in common with Poles and should not be admitted in Polish society, all the more because the desire to acquire the rights of a Polish citizen is dictated by personal interest, namely to recover his farm, which meanwhile was given to a repatriate or settler.’59

Poland’s Failure of Self-determination 135

Expulsion and verification Large-scale expulsion from the ‘Recovered Lands’ of the population regarded as German commenced in May and June 1945, well before any systematic verification of the nationality of the area’s prewar inhabitants took place and before the Allied Powers sanctioned expulsion at the Potsdam Conference. Some 400 000 inhabitants of the area were expelled during this unauthorized, ‘wild’, phase of the expulsion.60 That the expulsion of Germans caught in its net numerous ‘natives’ stands to reason. At a trial of guards from the notorious Lambinowice camp in 1957, a witness testified that, at the end of August 1945, military and civilian personnel at dawn ousted him and some 400 others, including women, children, and the elderly, from the village of Kuz´nica Ligota ‘in a brutal manner’, beating them and robbing them of clothes, watches, rings and other valuables. Forced to walk the 12 kilometres to Lambinowice, where camp guards greeted them with further beatings, they sang the Polish religious hymn ‘Pod Twoja obrone’ (Under Your Protection).61 In the summer of 1945, such incidents were common enough for the Ministry of Recovered Lands to issue memoranda in January and March 1946 declaring that the expulsion of even one person of Polish nationality, simply because his membership in the Polish nation had not yet been verified, ‘would be in flagrant contradiction with a well understood Polish raison d’état’ and therefore temporarily halting expulsions from regions with the largest concentrations of ‘native’ population and directing the creation of verification commissions in camps where the Germans were being gathered prior to expulsion.62 Yet incidents continued to occur. A Silesian provincial control commission reported that, when a rail transport of expellees departed for Germany at the end of August 1946 from a transit centre with 1700 detainees, 80 per cent of them of Polish origin according to the commission, the people ‘sang popular songs in Polish, a flawless Polish, and one had the impression that these are not deportees leaving for Germany, rather some kind of excursion of Polish youths setting off to conquer the world’.63 Not until 6 April 1946, nearly a year after much of the territory came under Polish administration, did the Ministry of Recovered Lands issue a detailed directive to provincial authorities concerning the granting of provisional certificates of Polish nationality to the territory’s inhabitants.64 Article 3 of the directive stated: ‘Persons will be recognized as having Polish nationality who file the appropriate application and prove their Polish origin or show connections with the Polish Nation and in addition submit a declaration of loyalty to the Polish Nation and State.’65 The directive instructed provincial authorities, in evaluating an application, to seek the opinion of the county Office of Public Security and of the county or town verification commission where the applicant resided.66 The process of verification of the nationality of the inhabitants of the ‘Recovered Lands’ was itself fraught with difficulties and contradictions.

´

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136 The Legacy of the National State

Under the conditions of war, many lost documents attesting to their Polishness, and local archives were often destroyed. Because migrants and settlers from the territories of prewar Poland did not have to undergo any analogous process of certification, many of the ‘natives’ regarded the requirement of verification as a form of discrimination, and some refused to submit to the process. Those who had been active in the Polish national movement in Germany before 1945 and had been subject to persecution in Germany felt humiliated by the process, particularly by the requirement that they sign a declaration of loyalty to Poland.67 In general, the excessive suspicions of local officials, often from outside of the area and ignorant of local conditions, had a negative influence on the verification process, discouraging ‘autochthons’ from applying. Despite the efforts of verification commissions, a majority of ‘autochthons’ in three Lower Silesian counties left for Germany. In addition, fewer than half the applications submitted for verification in Lower Silesia by the end of August 1946 were approved. Furthermore, verification did not dispel the fear of the decision being revoked resulting in expulsion, which discouraged others from even applying. At the end of 1946 officials estimated that over 8000 individuals in Lower Silesia entitled to verification did not apply.68 There was a tension between the desire to expel as many Germans as quickly as possible and to avoid expelling ‘Poles’. A memorandum from the Gdan´sk governor’s office in July 1946 noted that expulsion was not proceeding fast enough but at the same time directed officials to make sure that only Germans left, not individuals with the right to verification.69 Sometimes the verification of nationality came at the last minute, after individuals received an expulsion order and had been gathered at a transit camp, where they were registered and their baggage was inspected by customs officials prior to transportation as a group out of the country. But such verifications may not have always been possible because of the chaotic conditions in many transit camps.70 The deprivation of the war years, the destructive passing of the front, the plunder of anything of value by Soviets and Poles left many of the inhabitants of the ‘Recovered Lands’ destitute. With the re-establishment of postal contact with family members in Germany in 1946, the number of ‘natives’, whose Polish nationality had been confirmed, particularly women with children living in tragic material circumstances, seeking to emigrate to Germany to join family members there began to grow.71 By that time, massive numbers of ‘natives’ passing as Germans had already left for the West.72 In 1949, the authorities estimated that 6900 families – 20–30 000 inhabitants – in the territory of the former East Prussia under Polish administration wished to leave.73 Before 1950, an unknown number of ‘natives’ were among the hundreds of thousands of German citizens who were evacuated or expelled or who either fled or departed voluntarily from their homeland in the ‘Recovered Lands’. Among those who remained, some later identified themselves as Germans,

Poland’s Failure of Self-determination 137

whether in the hope of obtaining permission to leave for Germany or in reaction to their postwar experience of Polish rule. As a result there is more truth than fiction in the widely repeated maxim with regard to the Germanization of the ‘natives’ of the ‘Recovered Lands’: what the Germans were not able to accomplish in 700 years, the Polish People’s Republic accomplished in less than a decade.74 The census of 3 December 1950 put the number of ‘natives’ in the ‘Recovered Lands’ at 1 104 134, or 18.3 per cent of the territory’s population.75 Relying on the extant statistical sources, one scholar estimates that of the 1 037 000 former citizens of Germany whose ‘Polishness’ the authorities had verified by mid-1949, when the process of verification of nationality formally ended, only about 200 000 could be considered nationally conscious Poles in 1950. At least one-third were Germans or possessed a German national consciousness and had undergone the process of verification solely to avoid expulsion from their homeland. The remaining twothirds had primarily a regional identity and treated the question of nationality opportunistically.76 As a 70-year-old woman in the Opole region told the Polish sociologist Ossowski in 1945: ‘Let us be Poles, let us be Germans, let us be Russians, let us be Prussians, just so we can work, that there is peace, that there is something to eat, and that there is sugar for the children.’77 A new law, promulgated on 8 January 1951, conferring citizenship on all those determined to be of Polish nationality, closed the matter as far as the Polish authorities were concerned. As a consequence of the law, individuals had to fill out forms and provide photos for personal identity cards. But ‘natives’ wishing to leave for Germany feared that Polish citizenship would simply put another obstacle in the way of their departure. According to a report of the central bureau of the Citizens’ Militia, as of 12 May 1952, 114 000 ‘natives’ in the provinces of Opole, Olsztyn and Katowice declared their nationality to be German and refused to fill out the necessary forms or refused to sign them.78 In the following years some of these were allowed to leave. Based on an official estimate of the number of Germans still in Poland in 1950, well over 100 000 ‘natives’ who, according to the criteria of the government, qualified to be certified as Poles were among the 320 000 who emigrated to one of the two German states from 1950 to 1958.79

Conclusion Invoking the principle of national self-determination, Polish Communists sought ‘the unification and rebirth of the Polish nation in its own state’. To this end, they signed ‘exchange’ agreements with Poland’s Soviet neighbours and set up a procedure to separate the Polish from the German inhabitants of the ‘Recovered Lands’. For the individuals involved, there was little in that process that could be called ‘self-determination’. For most, circumstances beyond their control forced a decision on them. A leading Polish scholar, Krystyna Kersten, speaks of przymus sytuacyny (force of circumstances), which

138 The Legacy of the National State

she sees as always a part of any resettlement based on nationality.80 Louis Snyder makes a somewhat more qualified claim: ‘In general, it may be said that self-determination is seldom achieved by logical argument. Force and power are the deciding elements.’81 But even relying on ‘force and power’, Polish Communists still fell short of their nationalist goal. Despite the ‘fraternal relations’ between Polish Communists and the Soviet authorities, the agreements that they reached did not cover all ethnic Poles in the Soviet Union, only those who had held Polish citizenship before 1939. Moreover, a significant portion of those eligible for ‘repatriation’ remained in the Soviet Union when the ‘exchange’ of population covered by the agreements came to an end. In addition, some ‘repatriates’ did not accept the new Polish nation-state as encompassing what they considered their homeland. Similarly, in the ‘Recovered Lands’, where the Polish authorities had full control over the process of ‘re-Polonizing’ the territory and its inhabitants, a significant portion of the population that the authorities regarded as Polish was expelled, fled, or refused to identify itself as Polish. The nationalist dream of self-determination proved to be, one suspects not just in this case, a nightmare of suffering and loss for a substantial number of those for whom it was intended.

Notes 1 Thomas Spira, Nationalism and Ethnicity Terminologies: An Encyclopedia Dictionary and Research Guide (Gulf Breeze, FL: Academic International Press, 1999), p. 416; see also Oren Yiftachel, ‘The Homeland and Nationalism’, in Alexander Motyl, ed., The Encyclopedia of Nationalism, vol. 1: Fundamental Themes (San Diego, CA: Academic, 2001), p. 364; and Derek Heater, National Self-Determination: Woodrow Wilson and his Legacy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), pp. 3–27. 2 Yiftachel, ‘The Homeland and Nationalism’, p. 364. 3 Quoted in Krystyna Kersten, ‘Polska – pan´stwo narodowe. Dylematy i rzeczywistos´c´’, in Marcin Kula, ed., Narody. Jak powstawl´ay i jak wybijal´y sie na niepodlegl´ os´c´ (Warsaw: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1989), p. 474. 4 Krystyn´ a Kersten, ‘The Polish–Ukrainian Conflict under Communist Rule’, Acta Poloniae Historica 73 (1996), 139. 5 As a British government employee, Arnold Toynbee prepared a memorandum in which he compared the number of ethnic Poles and ethnic Ukrainians left on the ‘wrong’ side of the border under several options, including the 1939 German–Soviet border; it is reprinted in Jacek Tebinka, ‘Brytyjskie memoranda z 1944 r. w sprawie zmian linii Curzona’, Dzieje Najnowsze 29 (1997), 166. 6 Reprinted in Antony Polonsky and Bolesl´ aw Drukier, The Beginnings of Communist Rule in Poland (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), p. 291. After an evacuee filed a claim for compensation for an estate he left near Vilnius, the District Court in Gdan´sk ruled on 14 August 2002 that the 1944 accords, which provided for compensation, were invalid because Poland never ratified them: RFE/RL Newsline 6, No. 153, 15 August 2002. 7 The agreement with Ukraine is reprinted in Eugeniusz Misil´o, ed., Repatriacja czy deportacja: Przesiedlenie Ukrain´ców z Polski do USSR 1944–1946, vol. 1, Dokumenty

Poland’s Failure of Self-determination 139

8

9 10

11

12 13 14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21

22

23 24 25 26 27 28

1944–1945 (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza ‘Archiwum Ukrain´skie’), 1996, pp. 30–38; the quotes are on pp. 30 and 31 respectively. The agreement with Lithuania is reprinted in Stanisl´aw Ciesielski, ed., Przesiedlenie ludnos´ci polskiej z kresów wshodnich do Polski, 1944–1947 (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo NERITON, Instytut Historii PAN, 1999), pp. 55–62; the quotes are on p. 55. The following is based on Jan Penrose, ‘Nations, states and homelands: territory and territoriality in nationalist thought’, Nations and Nationalism 8 (July 2002), 277–97. Ibid., p. 289. See the map in W´l adysl´aw Czaplin´ski and Tadeusz Ladogórski, eds, The Historical Atlas of Poland. (Warsaw–Wroc´l aw: Pan´stwowe Przedsie biorstwo Wydawnictw Kartograficznych, 1986), p. 54, which shows that the western borders of post1945 Poland coincide more closely with the Piast state of 1018 than do the borders of the states of 1939 or 1634. The map omits the borders of the Polish–Lithuania Commonwealth of 1772, whose western border more closely resembles that of 1939 than of 1945. Kazimierz Piesowicz, ‘Demograficzne skutki II wojny s´wiatowej’, Studia Demograficzne 25, No. 1 (1987), 107; Jan Czerniakiewicz, Przemeszczenia ludnos´ci polskiej z terenów przyla czonych do ZSRR po 17 wrzes´nia 1939 roku (Warsaw: Uniwersytet Warszawski, ´ Centrum Badan´ Wschodnich, [1990]), p. 15, puts the number of those that came under the agreements in 1944, both ethnic Poles and Jews, at about 2.5 million. Edward Ko´l odziej, Dzieje Polonii w zarysie 1918–1939 (Warsaw: Ksia z˙ ka i Wiedza, 1991), p. 76. Wl´l odzimierz Borodziej, Stanisl´aw Ciesielski and Jerzy Kochanowski, ‘Wstep,’ in Ciesielski, Przesiedlenie ludnos´ci Polska p. 31; ibid., p. 304. Reprinted in Tatiana Cariewskaja et al., Teczka specjalna J.W. Stalina: Raporty NKWD z Polski 1944–1946 (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, 1998), p. 88. Ibid., p. 61. Ryszard Gansiniec, ‘Na straz˙y miasta’, Karta 13 (1994), 8. Zuzanna Gajowniczek et al., Polska i Ukraina w latach trzydziestych-czterdziestych XX wieku: Nieznane dokumenty z archiwów sluz˙ by specjalnych, vol. 2, Przesiedlenia ´ Polaków i Ukrain´ców 1944–1946 (Warsaw–Kiev: Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Wewnetrznych i Administracji Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej; Pan´stwowe Archiwum Sl´uz˙by Bezpieczen´stwa Ukrainy, 2000), p. 201. Ibid., p. 389. Quoted in Jan Czerniakiewicz, Repatriacja ludnos´ci polskiej z ZSRR 1944–1948 (Warsaw: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1987), p. 37. Ibid., pp. 47, 56, 131–2, 228. Kaja Kaz´mierska, Dos´wiadzenia wojenne Polaków a ksztaw´ltowanie toz˙ samos´ci etniczne. Analiza narracji kresowych (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo IFiS PAN, 1999), pp. 104, 166, 169, 172, 184. Grzegorz Hryciuk, ‘ “Cie z˙ kie dni Lwowa.” Akcja masowych aresztowan´ we Lwowie w styczniu 1945 r.’, in Studia z historii najnowszej. Profesorowi Wojciechowi Wrzesin´skiemu w 65.rocznice urodzin, Krzysztof Ruchniewicz et al. (Wrocl´aw: GAJT Wydawnictwo, 1999), p. 29. Alma Heczko, ‘Poz˙egnanie Lwowa’, Karta 13 (1994), 5. Gansiniec, ‘Na straz˙ y miasta’, pp. 18 and 24. Eugenio Reale, Raporty Polska 1945–1946 (Warsaw: PIW, 1991), p. 192. Gansiniec, ‘Na straz˙ y miasta’, pp. 25–6; the quotes are on p. 26. Ibid., pp. 26–7; the quotes are on p. 27. Czerniakiewicz, Repatriacja, pp. 211–12 and 223.

´

140 The Legacy of the National State 29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42 43

44 45 46

Ibid., p. 249. Ibid., p. 837. Ibid., p. 887. Ibid., p. 931. Reprinted in Ciesielski, Przesiedlenie, pp. 430–33. Reprinted in ibid., pp. 413–14. Czerniakiewicz, Repatriacja, p. 47; Piesowicz, ‘Demograficzne skutki II wojny s´wiatowej, pp. 107–8, comes to a similar conclusion in estimating that there were 2.7 million ethnic Poles in the Soviet Union at the end of the war, 1.4 million ‘repatriated’ in 1945, and 0.6 million in the years 1946–50. N.S. Lebedeva, ‘The Deportations of the Polish Population to the USSR, 1939–41’, in Alfred J. Rieber, ed., Forced Migration in Central and Eastern Europe, 1939–1950 (London: Frank Cass, 2000), p. 44; Czerniakiewicz, Przemieszczenia, p. 15; an earlier publication, Czerniakiewicz, Repatriacja, p. 47, estimates that about 65 per cent of the eligible population resettled to Poland. Czerniakiewicz, Repatriacja, p. 19; Andrzej Sakson, ‘Socjologiczne problemy wysiedlen´’, in Hubert Orl´ówski and Andrzej Sakson, eds, Utracona ojczyzna: Przymusowe wysiedlenia, deportacje i przesiedlenia jako wspólne do s´wiadczenie (Poznan´: Instytut Zachodni, 1997), p. 159, puts the total for 1955–58 at about 220 000. Philipp Ther, Deutsche und polnische Vertreibene. Gesellschaft und Vertriebenenpolitik in der SBZ/DDR und in Polen 1945–1956 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht), 1998; see also Jan Misztal, ‘Wysiedlenia i repatriacja obywateli polskich z ZSRR a wysedlenia i przesiedlenia Niemców z Polski – próba bilansu’, in Orl´owski and Sakson, Utracona ojczyzna, pp. 45–74; Jan Misztal, ‘Podobien´stwa i róz˙nice przymusowych wysiedlen´ Polaków i Niemców’, in W´l odzimierz Borodziej and Artur Hajnicz, eds, Kompleks wype dzenia (Cracow: Wydawnictwo ZNAK, 1998), pp. 179–84. Czesl´aw Ose kowski, Spo´leczen´stwo Polski zachodniej i pólnocnej w latach 1945–1956: Procesy integracji i dezintegracji (Zielona Góra: Wyz˙sza Szkol´a Pedagogiczna im. Tadeusz Kotarbin´skiego, 1994), p. 108; Wac´l aw D´l ugoborski, ‘Polen – Zwischen zwei Besatzungsdiktatoren’, in Ulrich Herbert and Axel Schildt, eds, Kriegsende in Europe: Von Beginn des deutschen Machtzerfalls bis zur Stabilisierung der Nachkriegsordnung 1944–1948 (Essen: Klartext, 1998), p. 135. Grzegorz Strauchold, Polska ludnos´c´ rodzima ziem zachodnich i pólnocnych. Opinie nie ´ tylko publiczne lat 1944–1948 (Olsztyn: Os´rodek Badan´ Naukowych im. Wojciecha Ketrzyn´skiego, 1995), p. 11. Reprinted in Tadeusz Baryla, ed., Warmiacy i Mazurzy w PRL: Wybór dokumentów: Rok 1945 (Olsztyn: Os´rodek Badan´ Naukowych im. Wojciecha Ketrzyn´skiego, 1994), pp. 4–6; Osekowski, Spoleczen´stao Polski, p. 90; Strauchold, Polska ludonos´c´ pp. 9–14; ´ the quotes are on pp. 12 and 10, respectively. Quoted in ibid., p. 35. Leszek Belzyt, Miedzy Polska a Niemcami: Weryfikacja narodowos´ciowa i jej naste pstwa na Warmii, Mazurach i Powis´lu w latach 1945–1960 (Torun´: Wydawnictwo Adam Marszal´ ek, 1998), p. 35. Piotr Madajczyk, Przy´la czenie S´la ska Opolskiego do Polski, 1945–1948 (Warsaw: Instytut Studiów Politycznych PAN, 1996), p. 99. A pamphlet, Upper Silesia (London: The Polish Research Centre, 1941), p. 30, claims that 60 per cent of the population of this region was Polish. Stanisl´ aw Ossowski, ‘Zagadnienia wie zi regionalnej i wie zi narodowej na S´la sku Opolskim’, in Stanisl´ aw Ossowski, O ojczyz´nie i narodzie (Warsaw: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1984), p. 123; Kevin Hannan, Borders of Language and

Poland’s Failure of Self-determination 141

47

48

49 50 51 52 53 54

55 56

57 58

59

60

61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Identity in Teschen Silesia (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), presents a similar view of the importance and longevity of the regional identity in another part of Silesia. See Wojciech Wrzesin´ski, Polski ruch narodowy w Niemczech w latach 1922–1939, 2nd rev. edn (Wrocl´ aw: Zakl´ ad Narodowy imienia Ossolin´skich Wydawnictwo, 1993). Ingo Eser and Witold Stankowski, ‘Einleitung’, in Wl´ odzimierz Borodziej and Hans Lemberg, eds, ‘Unsere Heimat ist uns ein fremdes Land geworden . . .’ Die Deutschen östlich von Oder und Neisse 1945–1950: Dokumente aus polnischen Archiven, vol. 4 (Marburg: Verlag Herder-Institut, 2004), Wojewodschaften Pommerellen und Danzig (Westpreussen). Wojewodschaft Beslau (Niederschlesen), and Ingo Eser, Witold Stankowski, Claudia Kraft and Stanisl´ aw Jankowiak, eds, p. 53. The Slovins (G: Slowinzen) were a subgroup of the Kashubs who were Lutheran rather than Catholic and made their living by fishing, p. 212, n. 12. Edmund Dmitrów, Niemcy i okupacja hitlerowska w oczach Polaków. Poglady i opinie z lat 1945–1948 (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1987), p. 34. Ossowski, ‘Zagadnienia’, p. 119. Quoted in Belzyt, Mie dzy Polska a Niemcami, p. 57. Quoted in Jan Misztal, Weryfikacja narodowos´ciowa na Ziemiach Odzyskanych (Warsaw: Pan´stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1990), p. 96. Belzyt, Mie dzy Polska a Niemcami, p. 69. Jack Ruszczewski, ‘Nacjonalizm, szowinizm, czy syndrom odwetu i odpowiedzialnos´ci zbiorowej? (Konflikty mie dzygrupowe na przykl adzie S´la ska Opolskiego w ´ latach 1945–1949)’, in Bernard Linek, Jo ´´rga Lu´´era and Kaia Struve, eds, Fenomen nowoczesnego nacjonalizmu w Europie S´rodkowej (Opole: Wydawnictwo Instytut S´la ski, 1997), p. 115. Madajczyk, Przy´la czemie S´la ska Opolskiego do Polski, p. 104. Osekowski, Spo´l eczen´stwo Polski, p. 111; Andrzej Korbonski, Politics of Socialist Agriculture in Poland: 1945–1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965), pp. 75–6. Misztal, Weryfikacja, p. 99. Leszek Belzyt, ‘Zum Verfahren der national Verifikation in den Gebieten des ehemaligen Ostpreussen 1945–1950’, Jahrbuch für de Geschichte Mittel- und Ostdeutschlands 39 (1990), 261. Reprinted in Daniel Boc´kowski, ed., ‘Nasza ojczyzna stal´a sie dla nas obcym pan´stwem . . . Niemcy w Polsce 1945–1950: Wybór dokumentów, vol. 4 (Warsaw, Wydawnictwo NERITON, 2001), Pomorze Gdan´skie i Dolny S´la sk, Ingo Eser, Witold Stankowski, Claudia Kraft and Stanisl aw Jankowiak, eds, p. 115. ´ Detlef Brandes, Der Weg zur Vertreibung 1938–1945: Pläne und Entscheidungen zum ‘Transfer’ der Deutschen aus der Tschoslowakei und aus Polen (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2001), p. 397. Ruszczewski, ‘Nacjonalizm, Szowinizm’, p. 118. Quoted in Misztal, Weryfikacja, p. 230; Ose kowski, Spoleczen´stwo Polski, p. 93. ´ Misztal, Weryfikacja, pp. 230–31; the quote is on p. 231. Reprinted in ibid., pp. 351–62. Ibid., p. 351. Ibid, p. 355. Bernard Linek, ‘Realizacja idei polskiego pan´stwa narodowego na Górnym S´la sku po II wojnie s´ wiatowej’, Sprawy Narodowos´ciowe, nos 12–13 (1998), 24. Stanisl´ aw Jankowiak, ‘Die Jahre 1946–1950’, in Borodziej and Lemberg, Die Deutschen o´´stlich von Oder und Neisse, vol. 4, pp. 430–31.

142 The Legacy of the National State 69 Reprinted in ibid., p. 232. 70 See the reports of the director of the camp at Gdan´sk-Narwik of 20 November 1946 and of the MZO commission on the camp at Lebork of 24 September 1947 reprinted in Boc´kowski, Niemcy w Polsce, vol. 4, pp. 148 and 177. 71 Linek, ‘Realizacja’, p. 26. 72 Belzyt, Mie dzy Polska a Niemcami, p. 67. 73 Misztal, Weryfikacja, p. 191. 74 For one version, though not the earliest, of this popular saying, see Joachim Georg Görlich, ‘Autochtoni’, Kultura nos 1–2 (1964), 136. 75 Osekowski, Spo´leczen´stwo Polski, p. 97. 76 Leszek Belzyt, ‘Die deutsche Minderheit nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg: Das Problem der sogenannten Autochtonen’, in Hans van der Meulen, ed., Anerkannt als Minderheit. Vergangenheit und Zukunft der Deutschen in Polen (Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 1994), pp. 56 and 58. 77 Ossowski, ‘Zagadnienia wie zi regionalej’, p. 103. My translation does not convey the flavor of the original in Silesian dialect: ‘Niech my sa Poloki, niech my sa Niemce, niech my sa Ruski, niech my sa Pruski, zeby my tylko mogli pracowac´, zeby byl´ spokój, zeby byl´ o co jes´c´, zeby by´l cukier dla dzieci.’ 78 Reprinted in Andrzej Sakson, ‘Tajny plan wysiedlen´ ludnos´ci rodzimej (mazurskiej) z 1952 roku w s´wietle dokumentów Archiwum Akt Nowych w Warszawie’, in Zbigniew Kurcz, ed., Mniejszos´ci narodowe w Polsce (Wrocl´ aw: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroclawsiego, 1997), pp. 124–6. 79 Osekowski, Spoleczen´stwo Polski, pp. 134 and 138. ´ 80 Krystyna Kersten, ‘Przymusowe przemieszczenia ludnos´ci – próba typologii’, in Orl´ owski and Sakson, Utracona ojczyzna, p. 22. 81 Louis L. Snyder, Encyclopedia of Nationalism (New York: Paragon House, 1990), p. 363.

Part III The Challenges of EU Membership

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9 Intellectual and Political ‘Europe’: Rupture or Continuity in Central Europe?* Bas¸ak Z. Alpan

Introduction Trying to understand European integration and enlargement without reference to the concept of Europeanization is at best an incomplete process and at worst a fruitless one, especially as there is a growing literature on Europeanization since the 1990s. It is, broadly speaking, a term that is employed to label or describe a process of transformation, but many scholars have also used it as a tool to analyse different aspects of its social reality. Many draw our attention to the development of distinct structures and policy networks in the creation of authoritative European rules, pointing to institutional and policy analysis with a primary focus on domestic organizational structures,1 while others speak of a process through which the European Union’s (EU) political, social and economic dynamics become part of a domestic discourse, identities, political structures and public policy,2 without making any special reference to organizations as such. The latter understanding of Europeanization as a process encompassing cultural, political, psychological and socioeconomic domains seems more useful to explain Europeanization in Central Europe. At the outset, one has to consider to what extent the Europeanization of the political spaces3 in the Central European Countries (CEC) is equivalent to the EU accession process. Or does it entail many more cultural or deep-rooted dimensions? In this respect, the first reference must be to the conceptualization of ‘Europe’ by the intellectuals who focused on the region in the 1980s and 1990s. It is essential to find out how, culturally speaking, the CEC were perceived vis-à-vis Western culture. Were these states considered as a part of Europe whose Europeanness had merely been delayed in the post-Yalta order and whose existence under Soviet domination was not enough to erase their European history? If so, have they simply returned after the fall of Communism to where they belong, and the Communist period was nothing more than a short interval in a big European continuum? Or are they taking their part in a play about a family with respectable and upstanding members, the 145

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Western Europeans, and a set of embarrassing and annoying relatives, the East Europeans?4 Are they just members of a Europe that requires to be known, but not a Europe that knows, as Voltaire reminds us?5 If so, have they been trying to return to where they never belonged? How ‘Europe’ was conceptualized by the intellectuals who focused on the region in the 1980s and 1990s is found in the arguments of the ‘dissidents’6 and in the transition literature, which this chapter examines. In addition to the intellectual debate, this chapter also investigates the current conceptualization of the idea of ‘Europe’ by looking at the political process in two Central European states: Hungary and Poland. The aim is to discover the ways in which ‘Europe’ was articulated by the political parties and how it became part of the political discourse. This approach helps to explain the extent of impact of political Europeanization in the region.

The irresistible lightness of being European? With the dismantling of the Communist regimes in the CEC after 1989, the remnants of a state-socialist and totalitarian past were substituted with a neo-liberal and pluralist parliamentarian political system that included a full-fledged civil society, an uncensored press, equal citizenship rights, and other liberties. This ‘return to Europe’ discourse was identified with a Europeanization discourse. In the literature about the Europeanization of the political space of the CEC there are two lines of thought on whether they could be Europeanized or not. The first line of thought starts from an ‘East–West dualism and the corresponding counter-factualism of an “us–them” polarity’.7 It was especially accelerated in the post-Yalta order, where the Berlin Wall actually demarcated a clear-cut line between East and West. In the 1980s and, especially after 1989, this line disappeared, at least as a symbol, and a vast literary and intellectual discourse arose on the putative transformation that the countries in the region had to be engaged in order to be ‘Western’. The case was made that a transformation of the economic, political and social areas was essential but there was no guarantee that such a transformation would be successful in enabling these countries to acquire some features that Europe has par excellence. The transition literature in the 1990s was abundantly punctuated with historical, cultural, geographical, political, and even emotional comparisons and distinctions between East and West. The transition literature also used the adjective ‘Eastern’ to describe this region of Europe. The East Europeanness of Eastern Europe is found in the writings of George Schöpflin.8 He saw the conceptualization, generation, legitimation and exercise of power as the source of different political traditions between East and West. According to him, the West was characterized by the fragmentation of power while in the East, power was highly concentrated. For this reason, according to two other authors, Mary Kaldor and Ivan Vejvoda,

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‘the trials and tribulations of democracy in the West have a direct impact on the image and influence of democratic ideas in the CEECs [sic]’.9 The adaptation of these institutions by the CEC has thus been set as a precondition for the democratization attempts in the region. The transplantation of a Western-style economy and its institutions is seen as cumbersome due to the new cultural values and rules that the individuals living in the CEC have to accept in order to arrive at a Western-style democracy, especially if civil society and a society based on class cleavages in the Western sense is said never to have existed there. As the economic transition followed the democratization process in these countries, a democratic transition, which had preceded the economic transition (Poland was the first country to introduce shock therapy in 1992), could only be a cause not a result of the economic liberalization. With such a democracy lacking the financial basis of a burgeoning middle class or diversified forms of interest differentiation, a political society was built around an identity, not interest.10 Interests were intrinsically shaped by the state, not against it.11 Despite early moments of freedom under Communism (the Prague Spring, Solidarity), the prospective premise of a neo-liberal system, of a weak state, and a strong civil society, was nonexistent in the CEC. There had been different segments in the society, but there existed no natural conflicts between social groups. As David Ost writes: ‘Take away the old regime in state socialist society, you do not have natural conflicts between different social groups.’12 Martin Krol, for his part, underlined the adversity of the political and economic structures of the Western democracies in the CEC. According to him, ‘the liberal tradition grew as a result of social and economic changes and not as their cause’,13 and led to the imposition of a civil society from above, not as a natural requirement of the society and associations. He adds: ‘After the elections [in 1990], I tried to find out why Walesa was successful.… The answer is simple.… Perhaps those of us who were engaged in the struggle for independence and freedom were mistaken about the values for which people were yearning. We thought they wanted freedom, and to an extent we imposed it on them, but it seems now that people do not know what to do with the freedom they have regained.’14 Europeanness was the emphasis the second group of intellectuals placed on Central Europe. In this line of thought, Central Europe shared the same historical and cultural trajectory as the Western part, and the main aim was to distinguish it from Eastern Europe, meaning primarily Russia. Piotr Wandycz argues that the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland belonged to Western civilization since they experienced all great historical currents such as the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment.15 For his part, Peter Hanak calls Central Europe the Eastern zone of the West rather than the Western rim of the East.16 The point of reference is again the same: ‘The idea of a unified East European region does not take into account the existence of two genetically, structurally and developmentally different regional entities: the Central European and the East European.’17

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For the dissidents of the Communist regimes, writing in the 1980s, the ‘Europeanness’ of Central Europe was perceived in the same way. Milan Kundera spoke of Soviet domination and Western ignorance of the region. For him, what was at stake during the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 was not the political regime, but Hungary and Europe, something he thought was too hard for a Frenchman or an American to comprehend. According to Kundera, during the invasion, Hungarians could die for their country and for Europe – ‘that’s a phrase that could not be thought in Moscow or Leningrad; it is precisely the phrase that could be thought in Budapest or Warsaw’.18 At that moment, Hungary was no longer European (meaning Western) since it was driven from its own destiny and losing the essence of its history and identity. What took place in Prague and Warsaw was not a drama of Eastern Europe, of the Soviet bloc, or of Communism, but the drama of the West ‘kidnapped, displaced and brainwashed. . . . in each of the revolts in Central Europe, the collective cultural memory and the contemporary creative effort assumed roles so great and so decisive – far greater and far more decisive than they have been in any other European mass revolt’. Kundera adds: ‘Europeanness could be prized not by those who took it for granted, but by those who lived in the greatest fear of losing it.’ The threat of Soviet power had been a factor fortifying the Europeanness of Central Europe. The Europeanness of the region appeared in the difference with Russia, both historically and culturally: ‘on the eastern border of the West – more than anywhere else – Russia is seen not just as one more European power but as a singular civilization, another civilization’.19 A natural development of the emphasis on the common cultural and civilizational traits of Central and Western Europe appeared in the idea of a retreat from politics in its narrow sense. It was Václav Havel who set up the main pillars of this doctrine in his ‘anti-politics’.20 His point of departure is the human being, with his conscience and subjectivity. According to Timothy Garton Ash, Havel’s retreat from politics was concretized in his use of moral categories and Judeo-Christian individualism. In this way, man was abstracted from his political, social and cultural endowments, which represented his downfall. Within the framework of this subjectivity, Havel criticized those in Charter 7721 who overestimated the importance of direct political work in a traditional sense and still conceived their activity primarily as a matter of seeking power in the state.22 Similarly, he rejected categories such as right or left, finding them outdated, and proposed categories such as right or wrong. Since the point of departure is the universal human being and since he/she, either Western or Central Eastern, is threatened by the same malady, being a dissident was for Havel a necessity that cut across the artificial boundaries imposed by the very same threat. By the same token, by making reference to the Western peace movements, he argued that the danger of war arises not from the existence of weapons but from the political realities behind them. As Garton Ash writes: ‘The main “political realities” in question are the division

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of Europe and the continued Soviet domination over half of it.’23 Using Havel’s reference to the concept of ‘peace’ and arguing that Havel creates a linkage with the aim of overcoming the divisions in Europe, Garton Ash adds: ‘What threatens peace in Europe’ Havel agrees, ‘is not the prospect of change but the existing situation.’ The key to a lasting peace lies not in disarmament or arms control as such, but in changing these political realities. In the long term this must mean overcoming the division of Europe . . . and moving toward what Havel calls ‘the ideal of a democratic Europe as a friendly community of free and independent nations.’24 György Konrad was another important figure in Central Europe’s quest to be European and to possess European traits such as civil society. His approach is found in his insistence on the politics of anti-politics. He writes: [I]t was East Central Europe’s historical misfortune that it was unable to become independent after the collapse of the Eastern, Tatar–Turkish hegemony and later the German–Austrian hegemony of the West, and that it once again came under Eastern hegemony, this time of the Soviet–Russian type. This is what prevents our area from exercising the Western option taken out a thousand years ago, even though this represents our profoundest historical inclinations.25 Konrad’s reference to the politics of anti-politics was an attempt to give a crucial role to civil society as these states opted for the ‘Western option’. Pronouncing the concept ‘civil society’ and attributing to it a special feature vis-à-vis the unwanted enemy, namely totalitarianism, provided him with the characteristic premise of the Euro-discourse of the ‘dissidents’. According to Michael Walzer: ‘Konrad urged his fellow dissidents to reject the very idea of seizing or sharing power and to devote their energies to religious, cultural, economic and professional associations. Civil society appears in his book [Antipolitics] as an alternative to the state, which he assumes to be unchangeable and irredeemably hostile.’26 What mattered after 1989 was not whether Western scholars or Central European dissidents were correct in their understanding, definition and description of Central Europe, but rather how the newly created political parties, in this case those in two post-Communist states, used the conceptualization of ‘Europe’ in the political process that eventually led to accession to the EU. While ‘Europe’ was conceptualized with reference to historical cultural and political processes by Central European intellectuals and with almost ideal and magical connotations, the very same concept became identified, more often than not, with reference to the EU in Poland and Hungary. The discrepancy between the conceptualizations of ‘Europe’ by Central European intellectuals in the 1980s and early 1990s on the one hand and in the political

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spaces of Central Europe in the late 1990s and early 2000s on the other is found in the discourse and activities of political parties in Poland and Hungary.

‘Europe’ in Poland and Hungary More often than not, the concept of ‘Europe’ was articulated by the political parties of Poland and Hungary within the framework of political Europeanization in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The Europeanization of the CEC gained a new impetus with the start of negotiations and the prospective accession of these countries and represented a second landmark in their history since their withdrawal from the Soviet sphere of influence in 1989. The accession and negotiation periods were of utmost influence in the Europeanization process and the social projections attached to it. In this context, one of the main components of the Europeanization process emerged in the form of the term ‘Euroscepticism’. It is defined by Paul Taggart and Alex Szczerbiak as ‘a contingent or outright opposition to the process of the European integration’.27 It would be hard to find in the 1990s a political party that would have offered an alternative to the EU, but a decade later the picture was a bit more complicated. In May 2000, around 69 per cent, 59 per cent and 49 per cent of the population in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic respectively reacted positively to the pronunciation of the name EU, while the percentages dropped to 54 per cent, 44 per cent and 42 per cent in May 2001.28 As a result of these changes in public opinion, a distinction was made between soft and hard Euroscepticism. Hard Euroscepticism is the one that entails a categorical and outright denial of the entire project of the EU.29 On the other hand, Taggart and Szczerbiak also argue that there is soft Euroscepticism, which is defined as opposition towards a certain policy or rule and is usually accompanied by a discourse on ‘national interest’: ‘If someone supports the EU as it currently exists and opposes any further integration, they are effectively [soft] Eurosceptic, because this is at odds with what is the dominant mode of integration that is on-going.’30 There are four observations to make about Euroscepticism both in member states and candidate states.31 First, Euroscepticism is an established element of all EU member states’ party systems except in Spain. Eurosceptic parties in member states have an average vote of 5.66 per cent; many of these are parties of protest and whose position on Europe may be evaluated as a secondary concern.32 On the other hand, Eurosceptic parties have a more significant average vote share of 25.9 per cent and higher levels of support in the candidate states, which is linked to an automatic association between negotiation and ‘national interest’.33 This picture in which soft Euroscepticism is a more common feature than hard Euroscepticism in both cases takes such a form that ‘the mean level of support for soft Eurosceptic parties is over twice that of hard Eurosceptic parties (with the means being 14.13 per cent and 5.42 per cent respectively) [for both member and candidate states]’.34 When

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comparing the candidate states to member states in this respect, soft Eurosceptics emerge as more important to their party systems in the CEC than in member states. By the same token, hard parties articulating Euroscepticism are ‘only derisory in the Central and Eastern Europe but are significant in some member states’.35 Second, in terms of the location of the parties in the power–opposition spectrum, the parties at the margins of party systems and minority parties usually seem to employ hard Euroscepticism while soft Euroscepticism is expressed by mainstream parties. In the member states, major government parties are absent from the list and mainstream parties only exist in factional form.36According to Taggart the absence of the governing parties among the Eurosceptical parties does not hold true for the CEC.37 Parties at the margins of party systems and minority parties employ hard Euroscepticism while soft Euroscepticism is expressed by major parties of government within the context of CEC.38 Third, Eurosceptic parties are usually on the right spectrum in the CEC, while they are evenly spread in member states.39 Euroscepticism is, therefore, not monopolized by a right-wing ideology. For instance, while giving the list of political parties with Eurosceptic positions, Taggart and Szczerbiak put the Republican Party of the Czech Republic on the same list as the Workers’ Party of Hungary.40 Finally, there is no direct correlation between party-based Euroscepticism and the levels of popular Euroscepticism for both member and candidate states.41 Euroscepticism is a strategically political concept. In the September 2002 parliamentary elections in Poland, Szczerbiak points to a misfit between party-based Euroscepticism and level of popular anti-EU stance.42 According to him, the fact that 25–30 per cent of Polish public opinion is critical of the EU is not directly reflected in the electoral results: ‘Even if one accepts that Self-Defence is a de facto hard Eurosceptic party, the share of the vote won by openly anti-EU parties (18.07 per cent) still understated the levels of public opposition to EU membership.’43 Despite the high percentage of parties that are critical of or hostile to the EU, the results of the September 2001 elections cannot be evaluated as a ‘Eurosceptic backlash’.44 Speculating about the erosion of the consensus on the question of European integration, Kopecky and Mudde argue that Euroscepticism does not mean a degree of rejection of the basis upon which the EU is constructed, but only opposition to accession at a certain time or in a certain context. They argue that Taggart and Szczerbiak’s definition of soft Euroscepticism is too broad and that they fail to distinguish between European integration and accession. However, Taggart and Szczerbiak introduce two different axes, one on the attitude to European integration and the other to the EU respectively, and argue that ‘although parties may change their position on the latter axis, they are very unlikely to do so on the former as this would involve a substantial re-orientation of their entire political ideology’.45 Instead, Kopecky and Mudde offer a new classification defining those who believe in the

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general ideas of European integration and support the EU as Euroenthusiasts; those who believe in the general ideas of European integration but are pessimistic about the present EU as Eurosceptics; those who subscribe neither to the ideas underlying European integration and the EU itself as Eurorejectionists; and those who do not believe in the ideas of European integration but approve of the EU as Europragmatists.46 Although they end up with the argument that Euroscepticism is something ‘ideological’, it emerges as a strategic concern, as the criticism of the EU at a moment rather than the European integration itself, and an opposition to the current rather than the ideal. Party-based Euroscepticism in general and, its most viable form, soft Euroscepticism are employed by political parties not in the form of a denial of or a resistance to the European project, but usually as a critique of a particular policy (such as the Common Agricultural Policy or the Common Foreign and Security Policy) or as a reference to ‘national interest’. Party-based Euroscepticism is engaged on pragmatic and strategic grounds. It does not entail a questioning of the belonging to Europe as discussed above.

Leader discourses The different ways in which Europe is conceptualized is also found in party leaders’ discourses or in party programmes. Consider the political manoeuvres of FIDESZ,47 which was in power between 1998 and 2002 together with its coalition partners the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) and the Independent Smallholders’ Party (FKgP): From what had started out as a radical alternative youth movement, and then as a party that often described itself as a ‘social-liberal’, by the late 1990s, FIDESZ . . . was transformed into a centre-right ‘catch-all’ party espousing conservative and nationalist values at least as much as liberal ones. Reflecting this, in 2000 the party decided to leave the liberal International – of which it had been a member since 1992 – and the European Liberal, Democratic and Reform Party (ELDR) and join the centreright European People’s Party.48 Notwithstanding the fact that the previous Socialist–Free Democrat coalition was known for its universalist, pragmatic and ‘modernizer’ stance, which implied an imperative ‘to catch up with Europe’,49 FIDESZ began to use a discourse with cultural references and conservative patterns, which was also reflected in its ‘Europe’ discourse: ‘While FIDESZ had unequivocally stated in its 1994 manifesto that Hungary’s fastest possible integration into Europe was its primary foreign policy objective, a centrepiece of its programme for the 1998 elections was standing for the national interest.’50 Similarly, the irreconcilable attitude that the party leader Viktor Orbán had during 2002 autumn and winter – before the 2003 EU Referendum – was replaced by a more

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superficial ‘dialogue with the electorate’ discourse during the referendum. As Brigid Fowler states: FIDESZ became more positive than in late 2002, using many of the same themes as the Socialists [such as higher incomes and living standards, greater life opportunities, EU transfers etc.], but laying more stress on dialogue with the voters. With his domestic constituencies in mind, Orbán also often played down the significance of the ‘Yes or No?’ choice, continuing to focus on the longer-term domestic policies he claimed would be needed to make accession a success, and not saying explicitly that prospective ‘No’ voters were mistaken. FIDESZ was explicit, however, that the referendum was not to be used as a vote on the government’s performance, although this position represented a reversal of the ‘us or them’ tendency of the party’s recent politics.51 Polish politics was marked by similar shifts in terms of political party discourses and affiliations with regards to ‘Europe’. The Polish Justice and Law Party (PiS), which declared that it would vote ‘No’ in the EU Referendum unless the Polish candidacy conditions in terms of agricultural subsidies and the transition period that is required for the Polish workers in order to join the free movement of labour were met, accepted at its January 2003 Congress the motto: ‘A Strong Poland in the European Union’. Similarly, the main actor in the anti-EU camp, the League of Polish Families (LPR), initially employed an anti-EU discourse, claiming that ‘“an important segment of our national assets has been given away while the remainder is (now) being taken over” about the association agreement and that the policies of previous Polish governments were “directed by the interests of foreign capital”’.52 Nevertheless: During the election campaign . . . LPR leaders were much less ambiguous about their outright opposition to EU membership. LPR chairman Marek Kotlinowski, for example, argued that ‘for us, the alternative to taking Poland into the EU is respecting the rights of the sovereign states . . . We are for cooperation with everyone who wants to build social relations with Poland on a Christian basis.’ Similarly, LPR vice-chairman Roman Giertych argued that, ‘we did not fight for our independence for all those years only to now give away a portion of our sovereignty to some kind of supranational organization.’53 The LPR’s previous outright opposition to the EU was converted to a more ambiguous and indirect reaction during the electoral campaign of September 2001. It is clear from the ‘Europe’ discourses of the political parties that ‘Europe’ cannot be used as leverage for claiming that the opposition to the idea of

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‘Europe’ in the form of an opposition to the EU constitutes the basis for an outright denial of political Europeanization; the conceptualization of the issue is highly volatile. We are faced with a totally different picture than the one offered by the intellectuals on the question of belonging or not belonging to Europe examined above.

Conclusion Since the signing of the Treaty of Rome in March 1957, the study of European integration has focused on the debates on the nature of its construction. Equally important are the content and the extent of Europeanization in not only the founding member states of the EU, but also in the new members and candidate states in order to assess the nature of the future of the EU. The objective has been to determine whether the term ‘Europe’ is equated with Europeanization and whether it plays a role in the activities and processes taking place in the political spaces of these countries. The main argument in this chapter is that the ideological and cultural concerns or discussions attached to the idea of ‘Europe’ in the late 1980s and early 1990s in the Central European countries were irrelevant to the formation of the political space of the EU, especially in the late 1990s and the early twenty-first century. As Alexandra Laignel-Lavestine54 indicates and as outlined in the introduction of this volume, ‘pressing invitations to return to the European spirit’ and the definition of the European project on a humanistic–philosophical basis were the main characteristics of the concerns of Central European intellectuals before EU enlargement. When the Central European countries became a part of this unification project in the 1990s, the depiction of ‘Europe’ in Central Europe experienced a complete transformation. In the latter period, ‘Europe’ was articulated only with reference to certain policies, stereotypes and discourses, which were not related to any culturally or ideologically driven question of belonging. ‘Europe’ was not presented as a question of ideological affiliation but as a slogan for shortterm gains or manoeuvres. In the transition literature of the late 1980s and early 1990s, the main reference point was the East–West distinction. Broadly speaking, it presented the ways in which ‘Eastern Europe’ could be transformed so as to have the features that the ‘genuine Europe’ had par excellence. In that evaluation, the East was seen as inferior to the West and what characterized the East emerged as that which did not characterize the West. The second line of thinking revolved around the idea of the ‘Europeanness’ of Central Europe and was adopted by Central European intellectuals, the so-called ‘dissidents’. They presented the disintegration of socialism as a unique chance to return to the place to which these countries already belonged historically, politically and, most important of all, culturally. The main aim was to use the alleged common cultural, historical and intellectual Central European heritage as a leverage

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to prove the ‘Europeanness’ of Central Europe, so much so that ‘Europe’ acquired an almost sacred and magical connotation. The word ‘cultural’ must be underlined here, as the cultural commonality between Western Europe and Central Europe was the main feature that established this discourse and designated ‘Europe’ as an element of allegiance. However, as it turned out in Poland and in Hungary, the situation was quite different at the political level. Another concept entered the picture, that of ‘Euroscepticism’. It was intrinsically strategic and thus could not pose a threat to political Europeanization. Except for the parties that showed a de facto or outright opposition to the EU, Euroscepticism carried strategic and shortterm concerns. Moreover, there was a shift in the Euro rhetoric of the political parties. This shift in the party discourses showed that the conceptual framework regarding ‘Europe’ was characterized by a limited set of references and by a slippery rhetoric. ‘Europe’ was conceptualized around certain stereotypes, which made ‘Europe’ an ordinary issue on the political agenda to be exploited politically. In this chapter, the concept of ‘Europeanization’ was chosen to find out whether and to what extent the Europeanization of the political spaces in the CEC was equivalent to the EU accession process or whether it entailed much more cultural or deep-rooted dimensions. In the end, the depiction of ‘Europe’ by the dissidents and the scholars of transition literature in the late 1980s and early 1990s in existentialist and identity terms that questioned the extent of belongingness/non-belongingness to Europe seems as unrelated with the main premises of the use and articulation of ‘Europe’ by the political parties in the post-1990 period.

Notes *

I wish especially to thank Stanislav Kirschbaum, Thomas Diez and Kursat Ertugrul for their valuable comments and suggestions. 1 See Maria Cowles, James Caporaso and Thomas Risse, eds, Transforming Europe: Europeanization and Domestic Change (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2001); Tanja Börzel, ‘Towards Convergence in Europe? Institutional Adaptation to Europeanization in Germany and Spain’, Journal of Common Market Studies 37 (4) (1999), 573–56; Tanja Börzel and Thomas Risse, ‘Conceptualizing the Domestic Impact of Europe’, in K. Featherstone and C. Radaelli, eds, The Politics of Europeanization: Theory and Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); and Johan Olsen, ‘The Many Faces of Europeanization’, Journal of Common Market Studies 40 (5) (2002), 921–52. 2 See Claudio Radaelli, ‘The Europeanization of Public Policy’, in Featherstone and Radaelli, The Politics of Europeanization, pp. 27–56; and Claudio Radaelli, ‘Europeanization: Solution or Problem?’, European Integration Online Papers (EIoP), 8:16, 2004, available at http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/2004-016a.htm (last viewed on 11 April 2006). 3 The concept of political space is widely used in recent studies in the social sciences. Yet there is no fixed categorization of this term. In this chapter, the concept is used

156 The Challenges of EU Membership

4 5 6

7 8

9

10 11 12 13 14 15

16 17 18 19 20

21

in terms of the terrains in which political processes, debates and reflections take place. In this sense, party politics is the empirical basis of this concept in this chapter. Tony Judt, A Grand Illusion? An Essay on Europe (New York: Hill and Wang, 1996), p. 60. Quoted in ibid. The term ‘dissidents’ is used for those intellectuals, among whom are political scientists, sociologists, historians and political activists in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the early 1980s, who were dissatisfied with totalitarian rule. Their articles and debates contributed to the formation of an intellectual world of learning and culture independent of the state. Although they differ in nodal points and references, their main argument is that Central Europe does appeal to the values and processes that make Europe Europe. Milan Kundera with his ‘The tragedy of Central Europe’, György Konrad with his Antipolitics, Adam Michnik with his Notes from the Prison and Other Essays and Václav Havel with his Power of the Powerless are in the vanguard in this respect. This intellectual strand could be denoted, broadly speaking, as the predecessor of the ‘Return to Europe’ discourse of the 1990s, which stressed the ‘Europeanness’ of the Central European candidates for EU enlargement. Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality (London: Macmillan, 1995), p. 16. George Schöpflin, ‘The Political Traditions of Eastern Europe’, in Stephen Graubard, ed., Eastern Europe . . . Central Europe . . . Europe (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 59–94 and Schöpflin, ‘Central Europe: Definitions Old and New’, in George Schöpflin and Nancy Wood, eds, In Search of Central Europe (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), pp. 7–29. Maria Kaldor and Ian Vejvoda, ‘Democratization in Central and East European Countries: an Overview’, in Maria Kaldor and Ian Vejvoda, eds, Democratization in Central and Eastern Europe (London: Pinter, 1999), p. 2. David Ost, ‘The Politics of Interest in Post-Communist East Europe,’ Theory and Society 22 (1993), 453–86. Ibid. Ost is very careful in using the term ‘class’, ibid., p. 460. Martin Krol, ‘Democracy in Poland’ in Kaldor and Vejvoda, Democratization, p. 75. Ibid., p. 74. Piotr Wandycz, The Price of Freedom: A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 3. This is also the case of Slovakia, according to Stanislav J. Kirschbaum in this volume, Chapter 1. Peter Hanak, ‘Central Europe’, in Schöpflin and Wood, In Search of Central Europe, pp. 57–69. Ibid., p. 57. Milan Kundera, ‘The tragedy of Central Europe’, New York Review of Books, 26 April 1984, p. 33. Ibid., p. 34. Vaclav Havel, The Power of the Powerless: Citizens against the State in Central-Eastern Europe (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1985) and Václav Havel, Anatomy of a Reticence (Stockholm: Charter 77 Foundation, 1985). The movement known as Charter 77 took its name from the title of a document initially circulated within Czechoslovakia in January 1977. Appearing as a manifesto in a West German newspaper and signed by 243 Czechoslovak citizens representing various occupations, political viewpoints and religions, the document had been signed by 1,200 people by the mid-1980s. Charter 77 criticized the government for failing to implement the human rights provisions of a number of

Intellectual and Political ‘Europe’ 157

22 23 24 25

26 27

28

29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

43 44 45 46 47

48

documents it had signed, such as the Czechoslovak Constitution and the Final Act of the 1975 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Václav Havel is one of its founders, the first post-Communist leader of Czechoslovakia after the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia quietly and peacefully transferred political power, in a process that was later dubbed as the ‘Velvet Revolution’, also known as the ‘Gentle Revolution’ in Slovakia. Timothy Garton Ash, ‘Does Central Europe Exist?’, in Schöpflin and Wood, In Search of Central Europe, p. 198. Quoted in ibid., p. 203. Ibid. Quoted in ibid., p. 194. The title of Konrad’s book is Antipolitics: an Essay. Translated from the Hungarian by Richard E. Allen (San Diego, CA: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1984). Michael Walzer, ‘The Concept of Civil Society’, in Michael Walzer, ed., Towards a Global Civil Society (Oxford: Bergham Books, 1995), p. 21. Paul Taggart and Alex Szczerbiak, ‘Europeanization, Euroscepticism and Party Systems: Party-based Euroscepticism in the Candidate States of Central and Eastern Europe’, Perspectives on European Politics and Society 3 (1) (2002), 23–41. The data are compiled by Petr Kopecky and Cas Mudde, ‘Empty Words or Irreducible Core? Euroscepticism in East Central Europe’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 30 August 2001, pp. 7–8. Taggart and Szczerbiak, ‘Europeanization’, p. 7. Ibid., p. 8. Apparently, the designation ‘candidate states’ is used for the CECs that became full members on 1 May 2004, and is used in the Euroscepticism literature. Paul Taggart and Alex Szczerbiak, ‘The Party Politics of Euroscepticism in EU Member and Candidate States’, Sussex European Institute Working Paper 51 (2002), 12. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 22. Ibid., p. 32. Ibid., p. 12. Paul Taggart, ‘A Touchstone of Dissent: Euroscepticism in Contemporary Western European Party Systems’, European Journal of Political Research 33 (1998), 372. Taggart and Szczerbiak, ‘Europeanization’, pp. 23–41. Taggart and Szczerbiak, ‘Party Politics’, passim. Taggart and Szczerbiak, ‘Europeanization’, p. 21. Taggart and Szczerbiak, ‘Party Politics’, p. 22. Alex Szczerbiak, ‘After the Election Nearing the Endgame: The Polish Euro-Debate in the Run-up to the 2003 EU Accession Referendum’, Sussex European Institute Working Paper 53 (2002), 1–8. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., pp. 7–14. Taggart and Szczerbiak, ‘Party Politics’, p. 34. Ibid., p. 319. FIDESZ–Hungarian Civic Forum (FIDESZ–MPP) is the original name of the party in question but it will be referred as ‘FIDESZ’ for the sake of simplicity, as it is often used in the relevant literature. Agnes Batory, ‘The Political Context of EU Accession in Hungary’, Briefing Paper (London: The Royal Institute of International Affairs, November 2002), p. 4.

158 The Challenges of EU Membership 49 The coalition was in power between 1994 and 1998 under the premiership of Gylua Horn. According to Agnes Batory: ‘In the view of the Socialists, there is no other way of modernization for Hungary and more broadly Central Europe than joining the process of European integration as soon as possible, voluntarily giving part of sovereignty and transferring that to the institutions of European integration.’ See Agnes Batory, ‘Hungarian Party Identities and the Question of European Integration’, Sussex European Institute Working Papers 49 (2001), 19. Together with its junior partner, the Alliance of Free Democrats (SzDSz), which most openly revealed its pro-Europeanness, the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSzP) appeared as the most liberal and secular party in outlook during this period. 50 Agnes Batory, ‘Political Context’, p. 4. 51 Brigid Fowler, ‘The Hungarian EU Accession Referendum 12 April 2003’, Referendum Briefing, No. 4, Opposing Europe Research Network, no date, p. 6. 52 Quoted in Szczerbiak, ‘After the Election’, p. 8. 53 Ibid. 54 Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Esprits d’Europe. Autour de Czeslaw Milosz, Jan Patocka, István Bibó (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 2005).

10 Euroscepticism in Central Europe Laure Neumayer

The study of Euroscepticism is one of the main bodies of a larger literature that focuses on the attitudes of political parties towards European integration in old and new member states of the EU.1 Far from being an analytical notion, the term ‘Euroscepticism’ has a strong normative and polemical dimension that qualifies it as a political tool. Moreover, it presents a risk of ‘conceptual stretching’ because it lumps together parties that have various political identities, express diametrically opposed views on European issues, and show different degrees of opposition to the European project. This chapter offers a critical analysis of a category that is simultaneously a buzzword in scholarly literature and a term used to disqualify political opponents. Generally speaking, three phases can be distinguished in the debates about European Union (EU) affairs in the Central European Countries (CEC): a broad consensus in favour of the ‘return to Europe’ in 1989–90 was followed by dissensions about European integration, as new competitors emerged in the political sphere and unpopular socioeconomic reforms were justified by the preparation for EU accession. The last period, starting with the launching of the accession negotiations in 1998, saw the success of ‘Eurorealism’, that is support for the principle of European integration and disapproval of the accession conditions offered to the CEC. How to account for the development of conflicting but ambiguous political views on European integration in the new EU member states? What are the factors that caused parties to adopt Eurosceptic positions in party competition? This chapter first focuses on political discourses in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary since the fall of Communism. After a short critical review of the literature on Central and Eastern European Euroscepticism based on theoretical and empirical arguments, it provides an alternative approach to analyse the usages of European integration in political competitions before and after accession to the EU, especially during the June 2004 European elections.

Critical discourses on European integration during the pre-accession period Two main perspectives can be distinguished in the studies of Euroscepticism developed in the CEC: analyses based on cleavage theories and typologies that 159

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distinguish various forms of disapproval of European integration. The cleavage theory has been applied to the Hungarian case by György Markus. He claims that the Hungarian party system was structured around a normative division between ‘nation’ and ‘modernization’ that coincided with the division between anti/ pro-integration attitudes.2 He labels liberal ‘modernizer’ parties ‘pro-European’, whereas conservative ‘national’ parties are called ‘Eurosceptic’. Yet a detailed empirical analysis of party manifestos during the 1990s in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic does not confirm the thesis of stable links between ideologies and positions on European integration; some parties changed their vision of European integration during the 1990s, going either from criticism to full support (some ex-Communist parties) or the other way round (some conservative parties lost their enthusiasm for the EU as the pre-accession process unfolded). Moreover, all conservative parties were not Eurosceptic.3 A second approach, focused on typologies of Euroscepticism, shows that critical approaches to European integration in Western Europe are common to several political families. Taggart offers a seminal definition of Euroscepticism, as ‘[expressing] the idea of contingent or qualified opposition, as well as incorporating outright and unqualified opposition to the process of European integration’.4 He establishes that a party’s position on the left–right scale is not decisive when determining whether a party shall be considered as Eurosceptic or not, and distinguishes several sources of Euroscepticism along two ideological dimensions. ‘Identity politics’ opposes those who conceive of the nation as the primary source of identity to those who identify themselves more broadly as ‘Europeans’ or ‘citizens of the world’. The second opposition concerns a ‘collective’ versus an ‘individualist’ orientation, depending on whether the individual is believed to derive from the community, or the community is seen as a collection of individuals. Ideologies that are the closest to a ‘national’ and ‘community’ orientation are expected to be the least favourable to European integration. Euroscepticism is more frequent for ‘national-community’ and ‘global-community’ orientations, and to a lesser extent, for ‘nationalindividual’ ideologies. Parties that support the current European integration mainly have ‘individual-global’ ideologies. These hypotheses are valid in the CEC; although the left–right opposition does not determine party positions on EU integration, ‘community’- and ‘national’-oriented parties are the most often critical of European integration. In order to break down a category often considered as over-inclusive, Taggart and Szczerbiak distinguish two types of euroscepticism in a later work focusing on the CEC: • hard Euroscepticism is a disapproval of supranational integration as such, that is, a ‘principled opposition to the project of European integration as embodied in the EU, in other words, based on ceding or transfer of powers to a supranational institution such as the EU’. This party position is simply called ‘euroscepticism’ by politicians in the CEC.

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• soft Euroscepticism is a disapproval of the EU as a specific political system, that is, an ‘opposition to the EU’s current or future trajectory based on the further extension of competencies that the EU is planning to make’. There is no principled opposition to membership here, but concerns or criticism are expressed as regards EU policies that amount to a ‘qualified opposition’. This party position is called ‘Eurorealism’ in the CEC.5 Drawing on Taggart’s terminology, three types of Euroscepticism can be distinguished in Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic (all the parties and their political orientation are shown in Table 10.1). In Central Europe after 1989, conservative parties that labelled themselves ‘Eurorealist’ supported European integration under the condition that ‘national interests’ were protected. This vague and encompassing notion, which was rarely defined in party manifestos, revealed a general mistrust of European integration that touched upon three issues common to all conservative parties: 1. These parties rejected the idea of ‘catching up with Europe’, they advocated a national path of development for their country based on its specific culture and national identity. 2. They were afraid of consequences of EU integration for national sovereignties and identities. 3. They criticized the EU for being a disloyal partner in the accession negotiations and refused to join this organization ‘at any cost’. They opposed ‘quick accession’ and ‘profitable accession’. Differences appeared according to the specific political identity of these conservative parties. Two types of parties expressed a ‘national community’ ideology: • agrarian parties such as the Polish Peasant Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe – PSL) and the Smallholders’ Party (Független Kisgazda-, Földmunkás- és Polgári Párt – FKgP) defined themselves at representatives of the farmers’ interests and claimed that their support for accession depended on its ‘costs and benefits’ for agriculture. They had contrasting views on the acquis communautaire; they criticized land ownership by EU nationals but praised the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP); • traditionalist parties such as the Law and Justice Party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwos´c´ – PiS) in Poland and the Hungarian Democratic Forum (Magyar Demokrata Fórum – MDF) promoted values such as religion, family and national traditions. They criticized the ‘materialism’ of the EU and its neglect of national identities. They also denounced the loss of sovereignty and the ‘federalist’ conception of the Maastricht Treaty as a trend towards the disappearance of nation-states.

162

Table 10.1

Orientation of political parties in Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic

Hungary Far left

Social-democrat

Liberal

Liberal– conservative

Conservative

Far right

MP (Workers’ Party)

MSzP (Hungarian Socialist Party)

SzDSz (Alliance of Free Democrats)

FIDESZ–MPP (Alliance of Young Democrats – Hungarian Civic Party)

MDF (Hungarian Democratic Forum), FKgP (Smallholders’ and Rural Workers’ Independent Party)

MIÉP (Hungarian Justice and Life Party)

Poland Social-democrat

Liberal

Conservative

Far right

SLD (Alliance of the Democratic Left)

UW (Freedom Union), PO (Civic Platform)

ZChN (National Christian Union), AWS (Solidarity Electoral Action), PSL (Polish Peasant Party), PiS (Law and Justice)

LPR (League of Polish Families)

Czech Republic Far left

Social-democrat

Liberal

Liberal– conservative

Christian democrat

Far right

 M (Communist KSC Party of Bohemia– Moravia)

 SSD (Czech SocialC Democratic Party)

US (Freedom Union)

ODS (Civic Democratic Party)

 SL (Christian KDU–C Democratic Union– Czechoslovak Popular Party)

 (Movement SPR–RSC for the Republic– Czechoslovak Republican Party)

Euroscepticism in Central Europe 163

The ‘national individual’ ideology was embodied by conservative–liberal parties such as the Civic Democratic Party (Obcanská Demokratická Strana – ODS) in the Czech Republic and the Alliance of Young Democrats–Hungarian Civic Party (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége–Magyar Polgári Párt – FIDESZ) that were in favour of free trade and intergovernmental cooperation in the EU. They developed a ‘realist’ conception of international relations based on the balance of power among nation-states. They advocated a ‘British’ conception of European integration, consisting in the protection of national sovereignty, the promotion of economic deregulation and the limitation of the role of EU institutions. These parties criticized the European ‘bureaucracy’, the ‘democratic deficit’ of the EU and the ‘social market economy’ as a fallacious ‘third way’ between socialism and capitalism. The former ruling parties, the Communist Party of Bohemia–Moravia  M) in the Czech Republic and the  ech a Moravy – KSC (Komunistická Strana C Workers’ Party (Munkáspárt – MP) in Hungary, respected democratic principles while remaining faithful to the Communist ideology. They defined themselves as representatives of the ‘losers’ of post-Communist transformations and of the most vulnerable social groups. Their political identity was based on an interventionist vision of the economy, a strong rejection of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership, and a will to ‘protect the national economy from global capitalist pressures’. These parties hesitated in their positions on EU issues after 1989 and hovered between hard and soft euroscepticism: on the one hand they feared stigmatization as ‘old guard’ if they rejected European integration, but on the other hand they rejected the EU’s economic liberalism. These parties avoided taking any clear stance on EU issues until the late 1990s, when they adopted a ‘left-wing Eurorealist’ position. They recommended the postponement of accession until their country was strong enough, politically and economically, to resist any domination by some of the member states. They also repeated that the decision to join the EU should be based on a precise costs– benefits analysis and an ‘apolitical’ assessment of the accession conditions. Contrary to ‘Eurorealists’, far right ‘Eurosceptic’ parties fully rejected the EU as a symbol of economic liberalism, of the loss of sovereignty, and of the weakening of national identity and culture. They suggested the development of regional cooperation as an alternative to accession to NATO and the EU, and frequently created equivalence between the lack of freedom during Communism and the ‘forced homogeneity’ imposed by EU institutions to European nation-states. These parties framed their disapproval of European integration with nationalist and anti-European symbols embedded in their national history – anti-German feelings in the Czech Republic, Catholic proselytism in Poland, and concerns for national minorities living outside the borders of Hungary.

European integration as a political tool Although this approach gives some clarity to the multiple contents of discourses critical of European integration, several caveats need to be pointed

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out. Empirically, the line between the hard and the soft components of Euroscepticism is hard to draw and many parties hover between the two. There is a high degree of vagueness in these classifications and second-guessing about what party positions really are. On a theoretical level, this perspective inadequately considers the respective influence of strategy and ideology in Euroscepticism. Taggart and Szczerbiak convincingly argue that there is a marked tendency for Eurosceptic parties to be located on the periphery of party politics, and that ‘party strategy matters’ in EU positions. But they also differentiate between ‘underlying party positions on Europe’ and the ‘usage of the issue of Europe in party competition’. The former are ‘determined by a blend of the party’s ideology and what it perceives the interests of its members to be’, whereas the latter depends on ‘the party’s electoral strategy and coalitionformation and government participation tactics’.6 This sharp distinction between positions and discourses on Europe needs to be qualified because of the close interrelation between party ideology and party strategy. To do so, it is necessary to focus on the role of European issues in the creation of the political identities that enabled parties to appear legitimate enough to participate in political games in post-Communist Europe. This research design breaks with the characterization of parties according to broad ideological categories such as ‘liberalism’ or ‘conservatism’, which posits that parties reflect pre-existing social interests. Parties do not automatically emanate from the interests they claim to defend. These interests are shaped by political actors who define them in such a way as to appear like the ‘natural’ representative of some social groups.7 Although Communist societies were internally differentiated, political parties redefined the main social and political lines of division after 1989 in order to accumulate political capital (legitimacy and various forms of support from citizens such as votes, party memberships and so forth). Newly established political parties needed to show how they differed from one another by framing issues distinctively in their discourses. European integration, as a symbol of the changes that occurred after 1989 in the geopolitical, political, social and economic spheres, was a major political resource that various actors used in order to build party identities and disqualify competitors. This is why there is no straightforward relationship between general party ideology and party position on Europe; politicians used European issues as a tool for political competition and ideological differentiation, according to their position in national party politics. ‘Euroscepticism’ was simultaneously an ideological and a strategic choice. Moreover, the development of pre-accession further blurred the relationship between party identities and positions on EU integration. Supporting EU integration was a condition of being able to take part in the democratic political games at the beginning of the 1990s. European issues were seen as a principle of classification that set apart political actors who could participate in the competition and those who could not. A pro-European stance became a political norm acting as a normative theme, that is, a general rule that determined the

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behaviour of political actors.8 Mainstream political parties could not ‘cross the line’ and criticize the EU as such for fear of being accused of ‘Euroscepticism’ and disqualified in the political competitions. They created new political categories, such as ‘Eurorealism’, that would shed a positive light on themselves. But the structure of political games changed as the pre-accession process unfolded. After the opening of the accession negotiations in 1998, domestic policies were increasingly influenced by EU rules. This shift from foreign policy issues to concrete socioeconomic controversies increased the value of European issues as a source of political capital, because EU accession was framed more directly according to the interests of the party’s constituencies. Widespread Eurorealism was the result of this tension between a necessary collusion between parties, which moderated their criticisms in order to appear legitimate political actors, and the instrumentalization of EU issues to gain electoral support at the expense of competitors. Saying ‘yes, but’ to accession to the EU became a pragmatic rule of the political game during the late 1990s, that is, a set of rules of a lesser importance that actors could freely define and redefine, without any risk of exclusion from political competitions.9 European issues were then used in various forms of power struggle among mainstream parties (competitions for a constituency, for office positions, intra-partisan rivalries). European integration as a tool for inclusion and exclusion from political competition In view of the fact that European integration was understood as a symbol for peace, market economy and democracy, political parties were classified as legitimate or illegitimate political actors based on their attitude towards the EU: • Politicians symbolically associated with the Communist regimes were distinguished from politicians from dissidence or from newly established political parties. Initially, former Communist parties were not in favour of a quick association, not to mention integration in the European Community (EC). Parties that succeeded to former ruling parties, such as the Alliance of the Democratic Left in Poland (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej – SLD) the Hungarian Socialist  M in the Czech Republic did Party (Magyar Szocialista Párt – MSzP) or the KSC not take a pro-European stance right at the fall of Communism. But they could not bear the cost of an anti-European position that would have highlighted their connection with the former regime and their reluctance towards the changes of 1989. As a result, they were very vague about relations with the EC and more vocal in their criticism of NATO. Later on, former Communist parties invested in the European debates depending on their conversion strategy. European issues, as a sign of break with the past and support of democracy and the market economy, was a major tool in the construction of a ‘socialdemocratic’ identity for the Polish SLD and the Hungarian MSzP. Support for

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European integration was simultaneously framed as a break with the past, an insertion in the international social-democratic family, and a respect for the socialist values inherited from the former ruling parties. The constraints in the usage of European issues were particularly strong for these parties and imposed a tight official pro-European consensus despite internal divergences.  M, which did not follow the same The Czech case was very different. The KSC path to social democracy and developed a ‘neo-Communist’ identity,10 was stigmatized because of its lukewarm attitude to European integration. Simultaneously the historical Czech Social-Democratic Party (Ceská Strana Sociálne  SSD), which had been maintained in exile during Demokratická – C Communism, strongly invested in European issues in order to redefine its  M and gain international recognition. identity, distinguish itself from KSC • EU issues helped distinguish ‘mainstream’ political actors from ‘protest parties’. Extremist actors had no reason not to oppose accession to the EU, since such a position reinforced their rejection of post-Communist transformations. The Hungarian Justice and Life Party (Magyar Igazság és Élet Pártja – MIÉP) for example, was the result of a split from the conservative MDF that was partially motivated by European issues. One of the MDF leaders, István Csurka, disagreed with the party’s support for a ‘Europe of fatherlands’. As head of the newly created MIÉP, he presented any form of European integration as a threat to the independence of the Hungarian nation and even as a ‘second Trianon Treaty’.11 MIÉP also interpreted the consensus of political and administrative elites on EU issues as a form of collusion leading to a dangerous neglect of ‘national interests’.12 European issues as a source of distinction between mainstream political actors Political struggles led some parties to alter their positions on European issues in order to frame a new political identity. Moreover, far from being monolithic entities, political parties are collections of individuals, groups and coalitions that hold partly divergent views and interests.13 Several lines of distinction about European integration existed simultaneously in Central European political systems, owing to inter- and intra-party competitions. • Parties that compete for the same constituency After the fall of Communism, parties that competed to be recognized as the only representative of ‘liberal’, ‘conservative’ or ‘social-democrat’ constituencies used their positions about European integration to disqualify their competitors. According to their emerging political identity, they accused their rivals either of being too flexible and ‘servile’ towards the EU, or too tough and

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‘nationalistic’. EU issues were especially used by conservative parties to delegitimize liberal parties by accusing them of neglecting ‘national interests’ in the process of European integration. Because they depended on the structure of political games at a given point in time, party positions on European integration evolved during the 1990s. Positions on European integration were used to justify the split of the Czech party Freedom Union (Unie Svobody – US) from the ODS in February 1998. The new party, which was ideologically close to the ODS and tried to attract its voters, highlighted two points of distinction: a greater respect for ethics in politics (it had been created after a corruption scandal) and a more pro-European stance. The new party attempted to create a political identity by defining itself as the only Czech ‘pro-European centre-right liberal party’ and accused the ODS of ‘Euroscepticism’. It also criticized the governing social SSD, for the gap between a ‘pro-European discourse’ and democratic party, C public policies that did not conform to the acquis communautaire. Thus US disqualified its main competitors and opened the way to an alliance with the Christian Democratic Union–Czechoslovak Popular Party (Krest’anská a  eskoslovenská Strana Lidová, – KDU–C  SL) based on Demokratické Unie–C the promotion of European integration. On the other hand, the ODS claimed that its conception of European integration was the only truly liberal one because it rested upon a realist vision of international cooperation based on free trade, economic deregulation and protection of national interests. The theme of national interests enabled the ODS to define itself as simultaneously ‘liberal’ and ‘national’ in its European manifesto: ‘[National interests] don’t mean any form of nationalism or any outdated category from the nineteenth century. National interests are a reality in today’s world and today’s Europe, not a dream from the past. We know how to define them and therefore, we know how to protect them.’ This reflection led to a criticism of the current sources of inspiration of the EU, i.e. ‘Habsburg nostalgia, German federalism, or pan-Europeanism’ and to a call for new directions for European integration.14 • Parties that compete for government positions European issues were used by parties that had been previously marginalized in the political sphere and needed to regain some legitimacy to be considered as potential coalition partners in a future government. This phenomenon concerned various parties: – Former Communist parties, the SLD in Poland and the MSzP in Hungary, made a move towards pro-integration positions that allowed them to regain power, respectively in 1993 and 1994. In return, office responsibilities fixed their pro-European positions: these parties managed to turn a European constraint into a resource.

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– Agrarian parties such as the PSL in Poland and the FKgP in Hungary toned down their criticism of European integration in order to be considered as potential junior partners in coalition governments. The FKgP had adopted a strong anti-European discourse, especially during the 1995–96 economic crisis that its leaders attributed to the EU’s negative influence. As of 1997, the party softened its criticism of European integration in order to get to a ‘mainstream’ position that allowed it to join the FIDESZ–MPP government. It advocated a ‘“Europe of nations” that would protect the interests of the Hungarian agriculture’. The FKgP kept its political identity as a representative of farmers’ interests, while obtaining ministerial portfolios that were crucial to the preparation for EU accession. – Parties that gained or lost power also changed their positions on European issues, respectively towards milder or harsher criticism of the EU: Acceding to power led some parties, such as the National Christian Union (Zjednoczenie Chrzes´cijansko Narodowe – ZChN) in Poland, to more moderate criticism of European integration and to splits from anti-integration factions. This shift happened after Ryszard Czarnecki, the leader of this party that belonged to the conservative coalition Solidarity Electoral Action (Akcja Wyborcza Solidarnos´c´ – AWS) and was known for its criticism of the ‘materialism’ and ‘atheism’ of the EU, became head of the Office of the Committee for European Integration in 1997. This decision, linked to powersharing issues inside the AWS, was meant to reassure the ‘Eurorealists’ by giving them a say in the management of EU affairs. The ZChN toned down its disapproval of European integration. Yet the dismissal of Czarnecki in 1998 strengthened the most radical current within the ZChN. Claiming that the ZChN was not able to protect Polish national interests, its members created a radical group called the Polish Agreement (PP).15 This split allowed the ZChN to stay in government without being challenged from within. Conversely, losing power led to a stronger criticism of European integration in the case of the Czech party ODS after 1998. During its 1999 ideological conference, the party leaders insisted more strongly on the negative aspects of European integration.16 Denouncing the ‘technical’ and ‘non-ideological’ perspective on European integration of the ruling socialdemocratic party allowed the ODS to exist in the political sphere and com SL. pete with pro-integration opposition parties such as the US and the KDU–C – Opposition parties also used EU affairs to criticize governing parties, particularly after 1998, when the European Commission started releasing ‘Regular Reports on the progress of [each candidate country] on the path towards accession’. Governments quoted their positive elements, while oppositions picked the Commission’s reproaches to strengthen their own positions on various issues. These reports were external sources of legitimacy that were converted into domestic political capital. But the tones of the debates varied from country to country: from 1998 to 2002, for example,

Euroscepticism in Central Europe 169  SSD for a lack of concern for national interests, the ODS reproached the C while the MSzP criticized the FIDESZ for having a pro-European discourse that was not followed by policies conforming with the acquis communautaire.

Multiple lines of division, linked to the institutional and ideological positions of parties, overlapped in CEC political spheres. The structure of the political debates was therefore unique in each country, as is shown by the complex situation of Poland between 1997 and 2001. At that time, the country was governed by a coalition formed around the liberal party Freedom Union (Unia Wolnos´ci – UW) and the conservative coalition AWS. Three lines of division were created in political struggles: a distinction between the former Communist regime and the former dissidents (SLD versus AWS ⫹ UW) that coincided with a split between the government and the opposition; a distinction between the pro-integration and the ‘Eurorealists’ (SLD ⫹ UW versus AWS); and a distinction between liberals, conservatives and social democrats (UW versus AWS versus SLD). Although the UW and the SLD presented themselves as the ‘most pro-European parties’, they could not fully cooperate with each other because of their opposition about Communism. The SLD, on the other hand, denounced the internal conflicts over European issues within the UW–AWS coalition as a source of weakness for the Polish position in Europe. Some leaders of AWS criticized the ‘hidden coalition’ between SLD and the UW and suspected them of trying to impose a ‘left-wing utopia’ European integration instead of the ‘Christian Europe’ advocated by the AWS.17 This led the UW to distance itself ostensibly from the SLD for the sake of governmental stability. Intra-party oppositions Another reason for the ambiguity and the shifts of party positions on European issues was their internal division regarding European integration, regardless of their official enthusiasm for this process. Any discussion on the finalité of European integration would have undermined the balance between currents inside political parties. These differences were linked to party members’ personal histories and ideological preferences. Internal divisions had various consequences for the patterns of party competition on EU issues: • Splits happened when party leaders or would-be leaders seized on the EU as an opportunity to create their own competing party – therefore reshaping the structure of political games to start new political careers based either on a more pro-European stance, or on a more critical position on EU accession. Although it developed vague positions on EU accession to allow for internal differences, the AWS coalition experienced several splits over EU issues. The former Foreign Minister Andrzej Olechowski left the AWS in June 1997, denouncing its leaders’ hesitations about the EU and advocating a deepening of European integration.18 On the other hand, the former head of the Office for the Committee for European Integration, Ryszard Czarnecki,

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left the ZChN to join the radical peasant party Self-Defence (Samoobrona) before the 2004 European elections. • Changes in the internal balance between party currents over time caused softening and sharpening of criticism of EU integration, such as in the Czech ODS. The most ‘Eurorealist’ current, around Václav Klaus and Jan Zahradil, had been strengthened by the 1997 split. It advocated the party’s increasing stress on ‘national interests’ issues after 1998. Yet this current was weakened after Klaus became President of the Republic in February 2003, and Zahradil was elected MEP in June 2004. A more moderate current around the leader of the party, Mirek Topolánek, then got the upper hand on European issues.

Criticizing the EU from the inside: the 2004 European elections in Poland and the Czech Republic Ambiguous party positions labelled ‘Eurorealist’ or ‘Eurosceptic’, as well as political conflicts over those terms, demonstrate that European issues were prominent sources of political capital that could, nevertheless, be used only in certain circumstances. Party attitudes toward European integration were determined by a tension between collusion and instrumentalization of European themes during the 1990s.19 During the 2004 elections to the European Parliament (EP), there was also a strong continuity with the pre-accession period as regards the divisions, labels and classifications that structured political discourses. The 2004 electoral campaigns were characterized by a weak mobilization of political actors. Voters were rarely given detailed political programmes and the European elections had a strong domestic dimension: they were considered mainly as ‘second-order elections’ or tests of popularity for the various political groups. These elections presented the Eurorealist parties with the following paradox: competing for positions in an institution that they simultaneously criticized for its democratic deficit, whose legitimacy they denied. Yet very few Eurosceptic or Eurorealist politicians recommended boycotting the elections – one exception being the National Movement (Ruch Narodowy – RN) in Poland. They tried instead to gain seats at the European Parliament and switch from critical outsiders to critical insiders. ‘Eurorealism’ got the upper hand in the electoral debates in Poland and the Czech Republic, where the conservative opposition parties sharply criticized the accession treaties signed in 2003 by the social-democratic governments. Eurorealists benefited from a certain popular disappointment with the accession and from conflicts between old and new member states (which enabled them for example to denounce the French–German ‘hegemonic tendencies’ regarding the EU constitutional treaty). These politicians presented the elections as a ‘second referendum’ on accession, and promised their supporters that they would ‘change the EU from within’. The debates dealt mainly with the protection of the national interest in the EU: the economic dimension of

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European integration was predominant and political actors competed to show that they would best use EU funds. The Polish conservative party PiS, for example, presented itself as ‘a party that is happy that Poland is in the EU, but is not satisfied with the place that our country has in Europe. We want more money from the structural funds, more influence of Poland on the EU’s decisions, and we want Poland to be better prepared to use the funds of the Union.’20 Similarly, the Czech conservative–liberal party ODS held an ambiguous position on EU affairs during the campaign, in an attempt to attract opponents as well as supporters of accession. Its TV spot was the following: Did you vote for accession to the EU? Or did you vote against it? The fact is, we are now members of the EU. Whether you like it or not, we are now part of an entity where the EP plays an important role. You are the ones who will decide if we have an important position in the parliament or not. You are the ones who will decide if we become a full EU partner or not. We want to defend our interests. We want, for the Czech Republic and its citizens, equal rights and obligations. We want the same chances for everyone. The EP elections concern each of us!21  M justified rather awkwardly its particiFinally, the Communist party KSC pation in the European elections. During the 2003 referendum on EU acces M had advocated ‘a temporary “no” because of disadvantageous sion, the KSC accession conditions’, while making it clear that it would accept the results of this popular consultation. In 2004, it claimed that the party would join other left-oriented political forces to develop a critical viewpoint on European integration and the European constitution:  M considers the conditions of the accession of the Czech Republic The KSC to the EU as disadvantageous in many fields. But our position concerning the elections to the European Parliament stems from the results of the 2003 referendum on the accession of the Czech Republic to the EU. The problems of Europe, and not only of the EU countries, are objectively becoming the problems of the Czech Republic and similarly, the long term aims of the  M will be to unite in many fields . . . to left-wing political struggles and KSC  M will to other socially-oriented initiatives. That is the reason why the KSC strive to have a representation as high as possible within the EP and its active left-wing groups. Through a critical position on the process and the modalities of what is called the European constitution, to the possibility for the  M aims at taking Czech Republic to influence the action of the EU, the KSC part in shaping positive solutions to the complex questions of social, democratic and peaceful cooperation between European countries.22 The tension between collusion and instrumentalization produced ambivalent positions on European integration during the June 2004 elections.

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Although all Eurorealist parties call for a ‘Europe of nations’ and high EU funding, domestic political contexts also gave specific nuances to Eurorealist discourses in Poland and the Czech Republic. The accession conditions: against ‘second-class membership’ Eurorealist parties criticized the accession treaties, and especially the transition periods imposed by the EU in the CAP and the free movement of workers. The Polish party PiS even denounced ‘the conditions of accession negotiated by those who wanted to work in the EU institutions’. Its candidate Michal´ Kamin´ski complained that the Polish civil servants accepted disadvantageous accession clauses in the perspective of their future careers in the EU, and their attitude constituted a ‘conflict of interests’.23 The Polish radical peasant party Self-defence requested a renegotiation of the accession treaty, especially concerning production quotas, free purchase of land, direct CAP payments to farmers, free movement of workers and an ‘independent Polish economic policy’. If this was not possible, it called for a withdrawal from the EU: The accession to the European Union under conditions of equality, of partnership, could be advantageous for Poland. But the entry into the EU under the negotiated conditions condemns Poland to a role of third-rate country in the long run. Of a country which, in a post-colonial manner, will provide young managers to work in the ageing societies of the EU, and a market for the surplus goods produced in the EU. . . . Under the negotiated conditions, Poland will be a permanent net contributor to the EU, that is to say that we, with our limited means, will have to finance the economies of Germany, France, Italy, England and other EU countries.24 The EU constitution: federalism and the loss of sovereignty Eurorealist and Eurosceptic parties criticized the European constitution as a symbol of a federal Europe and the disappearance of sovereignties. The farright party League of Polish families (Liga Polskich Rodzin – LPR) referred to its slogan for 2003 the accession referendum, ‘Yesterday Moscow, today Brussels’, and coined a second motto: ‘For Poland to be Poland, even in the EU’. This party presented the constitution as the first step towards a ‘European superstate’. Its candidate, Cyprian Gutkowski, justified the party’s participation in the European elections by the theme of the national interest: ‘We were against European integration. Why are we nonetheless candidates to the EU? So that a strong Polish voice gets heard in the EU. We want to fight for Polish national interest. We want to create a strong bloc of opponents to the federation, to prevent the adoption of the Constitution and to put an end to the regionalization that destroys the unity of our country.’25

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The vice-president of the traditionalist conservative party PiS, Kazimierz Michal´ Ujazdowski, called for a return to a reflection in terms of national interests, of strengthening internal state structures and of questioning the ‘Euroenthusiast’ ideology. We talk in our programme of going back to the source of European integration, to the vision of the founding fathers: a Christian Europe founded on solidarity and partnership. The PiS is a political party that promotes these values that are the basis of European integration and are now threatened by hegemonic and selfish tendencies of some countries.26 Although it criticized current EU policies, the PiS presented itself as the only ‘truly European party’. National specificities of Eurorealist discourses In Poland, the European elections coincided with strong diplomatic tensions with France and Germany due to Poland’s participation in the war in Iraq, and to Polish positions on the EU constitution. Two elements of the constitutional treaty were deeply controversial: the calculation of qualified majority voting in the Council of Ministers, different from the one decided in the Nice Treaty, and the lack of references to the Christian legacy of Europe. There was a strong consensus among opposition parties against the government’s search for a compromise with other EU members. The liberal party Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska – PO) coined the very popular slogan ‘Nice or death’. Its president, Jan Maria Rokita, also adopted a proactive position concerning the future conflicts in the EU and used an anti-German and anti-French rhetoric: A conflict about the constitutional treaty is awaiting us, and we do not want to give up the conditions of our presence in the EU that were defined in Nice. There will be a conflict on the 2007–2013 budget, and we want to pressure the European Commission, against some rich and selfish EU countries, so that this budget does not decrease. The third conflict will touch upon the French–German initiative to harmonize taxes, which we refuse. The strength of the PO representation will be decisive for all these issues that touch upon Polish interest in the EU. The PO is the only Polish party that will join the main political group in the EP, the European People’s Party.27 The PiS was one of the few Polish parties that prepared a detailed European manifesto, entitled the ‘Cracow declaration’. This programme was centred on three requests: • a ‘Europe of solidarity’ with substantial financial help from richest to lessdeveloped countries; • the ‘defence of historical truth’ about the Christian legacy of Europe; and

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• a criticism of the constitution and a promotion of an intergovernmental European integration. The PiS criticized the constitutional treaty in the following way: We do not accept the so-called ‘compromise’ for the European constitution that the left and its supporters want. We mention once again the conditions that have to be met for the constitutional treaty not to weaken the economic and political position of Poland: – keep the position of Poland in the EU that has been defined by the Nice Treaty – confirm the Christian dimension of the European culture and civilization in the preamble of the Constitution – define precisely the regulations that give EC law primacy over the Polish Constitution – keep unanimity voting for any changes to the European Constitution – protect the sovereignty of our Republic in foreign policy – keep NATO as the main institution that guarantees the security of Europe – maintain the independence – within the internal market – of Polish economic policy.28 In the Czech Republic, Eurorealist positions were deeply rooted in the conservative–liberal party ODS. Three elements defined its ideological orientation: the interpretation of Communism as ‘an unnatural order’, the wish to go back to pre-Communist values through a radical break with the past, and the promotion of free market as a national value.29 The ODS denounced the ‘fetishization’ of EU and the ‘dissolution of the nation-states between Brussels and the regions’. The declarations of its leaders during the European elections echoed the positions of Václav Klaus, who had pointed out the expected ‘loss of independence’ of the country a few days before the 1 May 2004 deadline.30 The ODS held a critical view of European integration as regards the institutions and the policies of the EU. In order to ‘defend national interests’ against the other member states, it offered its voters a ‘Decalogue’ of the main duties of the ODS at the European Parliament: 1. We want to abolish quickly the unequal conditions (for example the free movement of workers and services, direct payments to our farmers, participation in the Schengen system) that were defined during the accession negotiations with the EU. 2. We will only approve a constitutional treaty that would not jeopardize our position in the EU compared with the situation guaranteed by our accession treaty.

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3. We will always advocate clear and simple European laws, instead of flows of directives that go towards excessive regulation and a growth in the European bureaucracy. 4. We do not want Europe and North America to compete on the political and security level, but to cooperate closely so that NATO remains the pillar of transatlantic relations. 5. We support the strengthening of the EU capacities in the fight against international terrorism, without curbing more than necessary the citizens’ individual freedoms, and without any additional bureaucracy. 6. We will strive to promote major reform of the EU common agricultural policy, which discriminates against our farmers, is disadvantageous to consumers and disrupts the EU internal market. 7. We want to keep tax policy, including healthcare, social services and pensions, in the exclusive competences of national institutions (governments and parliaments) because their harmonization at the European level is not in the interest of the Czech Republic. 8. We will strive towards a reasonable and effective split, without waste or increase, of the funds from the EU budget, to which the Czech Republic will also contribute. 9. We favour a sensible utilization of the EU funds, particularly for the projects of development of the regions, the towns and the villages, for the construction of transport infrastructures and for the protection of the environment. 10. We will collaborate at the European Parliament with its main fraction, the EPP–DE, but we will always act first in the interest of the Czech Republic.31 Drawing on its criticism of the lack of social dimension and the inequality  M had five main requests: between member states in the EU, the KSC 1. We are in favour of a democratic cooperation based on equality. 2. A Europe of solidarity, social rights and equality. 3. We want a Europe of productive economy, sustainable development, protection of the environment. 4. We favour a Europe open to the world, a Europe of peace and cooperation. 5. Together for a common programme of the European left.  M’s programme ended thus: The KSC Let us not leave the European structures to the anti-social left, which does not hesitate, in the interest of its economic sphere of influence, to benefit from ethnic conflicts and to start local wars.32 . . . The current form of European integration is not final. The development of European integration and its results to date show the necessity of a radical change of orientation.

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The EU needs to make a new strategic choice, especially after its enlargement to new members. . . . We cannot accept passively the contradictory aspects of the EU, nor can we fully reject them. We are opening a new chapter in the history of our nations, of Europe and of the world. Our main goal is to strengthen the influence of the left on the European and international scene, through an active participation in the work and the union of the programs of the European left, to create new social and political relations.33

Conclusion Cleavage theories and typologies of ‘Euroscepticism’ have been used to account for the development of political debates about EU affairs in the CEC after 1989. Cleavage theories tend to downplay the dynamics of party positions on European integration during the 1990s. On the other hand, some typologies use over-inclusive categories and explain only partially why parties adopt critical positions on European integration. In order to understand better the links between party ideology and strategy in Euroscepticism, and the dynamics of the criticism of European integration in the 1990s, this chapter examined the role of European issues in shaping the rules of party competition in CEC after the fall of Communism. European issues were prominent sources of political capital that were used by political parties to disqualify their competitors and create their identities, along three main divisions: 1. dissident parties and new parties versus successors of Communist parties: this distinction became less prominent when some former Communist parties became ‘social-democrat’, i.e. pro-European, or turned to a left-wing ‘Eurorealism’; 2. mainstream parties versus extremist parties: this distinction, symbolized by the opposing labels ‘Eurorealism’ and ‘Euroscepticism’, remained valid during the whole pre-accession period. It accounts for the semantic creativity of parties to disqualify their competitors and promote themselves (‘Euronaive’, ‘Euroenthusiast’ and so forth); 3. mainstream parties against each other: this principle of political distinction also remained valid during the whole of the 1990s. Parties expressed ambiguous visions of European integration either to create a constituency, take office positions, or manage intra-party rivalries. What has changed with EU accession and participation of the CEC in the 2004 European elections? There was a strong continuity with the pre-accession period as regards the divisions, labels and classifications that structured political discourses. ‘Eurorealists’ switched from ‘critical outsiders’ to ‘critical insiders’. Presenting the elections as a second referendum on EU accession,

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they claimed that they would ‘change the EU from within’, either to create a ‘Europe of nation-states’ or to strengthen the social dimension of European integration. Despite these criticisms, their participation in the European elections tended to increase the legitimacy of the community institutions such as the European Parliament by showing that the game is worth playing. One might wonder about the longer-term implications of this shift from ‘outsider’ to ‘insider’ in the European Parliament: whether the role of Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a source of socialization and moderation in the critics of the EU, or a tribune to advocate against further European integration, remains a question for further research.

Notes 1 See Robert Harmsen and Menno Spiering, ‘Euroscepticism. Party Politics, National Identity and European Integration,’ European Studies 20 (2004), special issue and Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart, eds, Opposing Europe: The Comparative Party Politics of Euroscepticism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). 2 György Markus, The Typology of Political Cleavages in East Central Europe – a Blueprint for the West? – The Case of Hungary, Working Papers of Political Science, No. 15, Budapest: Political Science Institute, Academy of Sciences, 1997. 3 Laure Neumayer, L’enjeu européen dans les transformations postcommunistes – Hongrie, Pologne, République tchèque 1989–2004 (Paris: Belin, 2006). 4 Paul Taggart, ‘A Touchstone of Dissent: Euroscepticism in contemporary Western European party systems’, European Journal of Political Research 33 (1998), 366. 5 Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart, Theorising Party-Based Euroscepticism: Problems of Definition, Measurement and Causality, SEI Working Papers in Contemporary European Studies No. 69, Brighton, Sussex European Institute, 2003. 6 Ibid., p. 21. 7 Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement (Paris: Minuit, 1979); Michel Offerlé, Les partis politiques, 3rd edn (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1997). 8 Frederick G. Bailey, Les règles du jeu politique: étude anthropologique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1971). 9 Ibid. 10 Michel Perottino, ‘Un visage pratique du “néo-communisme” tchèque: la propagande électorale du Parti Communiste de Bohême et de Moravie depuis 1990’, Revue d’Etudes Comparatives Est-Ouest 31 (3) (2000), 43–68. 11 István Csurka, ‘A nemzetépíto ´´állam – a MIÉP programja’, Havi Magyar Fórum, 1998. 12 Similarly, the far-right party Polish Agreement (Porozuminie Polskie – PP) opposed in its 1999 manifesto the politicians who wanted to ‘maintain and strengthen the independence of the state and the sovereignty of the Polish nation’ to those who ‘[worked] towards the gradual disappearance of Poland’, Its programme was clear: ‘We reject the prospect of integration to the European Union because it leads to the liquidation of the independence of Poland and to the disappearance of the sovereignty of the Polish nation in its own state’. cf. ‘Za´l oz· enia Programu dla niepodlegl ej Polski’, October 1999. ´ 13 See Offerlé, Les partis politiques.

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14 Jan Zahradil et al., ‘Odpoved’ kritiku m Manifestu ceského eurorealismu’, October 2001, zahradil.cz/cze/download.php. 15 This grouping created the League of Polish Families (Liga Polskich Rodzin – LPR) in 2001.  16 ODS, ‘Zpravodajská zpráva z jednání zahranicnce bezpecnostní sekce’, May 1999. 17 During the 2000 presidential campaign, the head of Solidarity trade union Marian Krzaklewski denounced the ‘unionist ideology’ developed by the SLD and the ‘west wing of UW’, which considered EU accession as a goal in itself at the expense of the protection of Polish interests, cf. ‘Unijna ideologia’, Unia & Polska, 24 July 2000, p. 4. 18 ‘Odchodza c z AWS’, Gazeta Wyborcza, 13 June 1997. 19 See Bailey, Les règles du jeu politique. 20 EUROPAP, 5 June 2004. 21 ODS, ‘Stejné šance pro vsšechny, modra šance pro Evropu’, April 2004.  M, ‘S vámi pro vás, doma i v EU’, May 2004. 22 KSC 23 EUROPAP, 17 May 2004. 24 Samoobrona, ‘Stanowisko partii Samoobrona RP w sprawie przysta penia Poski do Unii europejskiej na wynegocianych warunkach’, May 2004. 25 EUROPAP, 17 May 2004. 26 Ibid., 1 June 2004. 27 Ibid., 7 June 2004. 28 PiS, ‘Deklaracja Krakowska’, April 2004. 29 See Neumayer, L’enjeu européen.  eši ztratí v EU samostatnost’ (The Czechs lose their independence 30 Václav Klaus, ‘C in the EU), Mladá Fronta Dnes, 22 April 2004.  31 ODS, ‘Stejné s ance pro všechny, modra šance pro Evropu’, April 2004. 32 This is an allusion to the intervention of NATO in Kosovo in 1999.  M, ‘S vámi pro vás, doma i v EU’, May 2004. 33 KSC

11 Europeanization and Gender Equality in the Czech Republic and Slovakia Ingrid Röder

Introduction This chapter focuses on the pre-accession measures of the European Union (EU) on the question of gender equality in the Czech Republic and Slovakia during the years 1996–2004, with a view also to contributing to our understanding of the manner in which this area can be Europeanized. The main part of the chapter focuses on the quality of gender equality implementation in the two countries before accession in 2004. It is just one of the many projects that the candidate countries from Central Europe had to deal with, and in the process demonstrated clearly the differences and specific conditions of each. Invariably, this had implications not only for the enlargement process but also for the meaning of Europe. As the European Commission put it: Throughout the enlargement process, discussions and negotiations on gender equality have implied more than candidate countries just catching up with EU legislation and process. The creation of an ever closer union of the peoples of Europe and inclusion of these countries within the European Union brings a wealth of experience and achievements from which the existing member states can also learn. This process of mutual amalgamation of what has been achieved across so many countries can be expected to refocus gender equality in Europe and to provide a fresh and promising impetus towards a gender equal society.1 In other words, the candidate countries, especially the Czech Republic and Slovakia, brought different developments and outcomes to the EU. Along with the question of gender equality, these are some of the issues that this chapter examines. During the Communist period, there was no comprehensive concept of gender equality in the Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC). The general policy was that women are equal through paid work, which means that if women do have paid work, they do not need any extra measures to be 179

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situated equally to men. The socialist government in Czechoslovakia declared ‘ “the woman question” to be solved with the emancipation of women under socialism’.2 But in fact there was no real gender equality since it was never questioned that it is the women’s responsibility to do the housework3 and women were only marginally represented at higher political levels. After 1989, many far-reaching changes were taking place because of the transformation from a planned to a market economy, from authoritarian rule to a democratic system and because of the opening up to the West. These changes also influenced the area of gender equality, unfortunately in many areas not improving the conditions for women. For example, the abolition of the quota system caused a sharp drop in the number of female politicians, unemployment figures rose, and kindergartens and crèches were closed. To lessen the impact of these negative changes support came from outside; among the influential actors was the EU. This assistance succeeded in making the topic understood as important. Since the accession in 2004, representatives from Slovakia and the Czech Republic occupy two of the prominent positions dealing with gender equality at the EU level: Vladimir Špidla, former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic, is the European Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, and Anna Zaborska, former member of the Slovak parliament, is now head of the Committee of Women’s Rights and Gender Equality at the European Parliament.

The meaning of Europeanization in the accession process Comparative Europeanization research offers explanations why national adaptation to EU legislation occurs and why national differences in the European area exist. Europeanization affects EU member states and the surrounding countries, especially the candidate countries: ‘The possibility of extending studies of “Europeanization” to the CEE [Central Eastern European] accession countries arises out of the nature of the EU’s conditionality towards these countries, which now requires changes to their structures of governance and the implementation of specific public policies.’4 The scope of activity for the relevant actors is therefore increased by the European facet.5 This chapter analyses the development of gender equality in the framework of the pre-accession strategy from the perspective of Europeanization. Europeanization follows from a combination of adaptation pressure from the EU and broadening the horizon of individual countries. The national circumstances in Slovakia and the Czech Republic are explored since the implementation of the EU guidelines is dependent on the respective national policies and norms which are ‘the domestic bottlenecks through which EC equality norms need to pass’.6 There were no comprehensive programmes to facilitate the fulfilling of the accession criteria7 during the former accession rounds. The extensive preaccession strategy for the EU Eastern enlargement in 2004 was a novelty.

Europeanization and Gender Equality 181

It mainly helped to transpose the acquis communautaire, the common European legislation. Even though the EU and EU enlargements follow mainly political and economic motives and not social political principles, one small part of the acquis communautaire deals with gender equality.8 It is a topic that has been classified as one of the ‘fundamental principles of a modern democracy’ by the European Commission.9 The European Commission also emphasized several times that without equal rights for women and men and the mechanisms for the implementation of these rights, accession is not possible.10 The legislation in the area of gender equality is seen as one of the most successful parts of the social policy and its implementation on the European level.11 Especially after the accession to the EU of the Northern European countries and the Treaty of Amsterdam, gender equality became one of the focal points of the EU. Two countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, were chosen as case studies since these two countries offer the possibility to explore the different developments regarding Europeanization in the past ten years since their division in 1993 after their common socialist past.12 The common cultural and historical background of the Czech Republic and Slovakia leads to the assumption that similar factors during the Europeanization process led to similar changes in all areas of the acquis communautaire, and also in the area of gender equality. From the beginning, the Czech Republic was seen as one of the role models of the CEEC regarding the development of economic and democratic transformations.13 In 1996 it was described as a country that follows a European policy, supersedes the simple utterance of the wish for accession and follows it through.14 That is why more measures were implemented there during the pre-accession strategy than in Slovakia. Slovakia was lagging behind because of the policies and style of rule of the Meciar government15 and remained unchanged until a new government was elected in 1998. Even in 2002 it was still widely thought that Slovakia would not be part of the first round of accession.16 Despite this, both countries did in the end belong to the first round of accession since Slovakia quickly caught up. The accession negotiations with the Czech Republic started in 199817 and with Slovakia two years later, in 2000.18 Since 2002 there existed concrete accession negotiations with both countries, since they had mainly implemented the acquis communautaire.

The accession period The wish to be part of the EU led to the need for change in most of the areas of the acquis communautaire and also in the area of gender equality. The EU’s commitment to gender equality was seen as strong because of its existing legislation and proclamations: ‘The motivation to gain access to the European Union (EU), in the context of the Union’s strong commitment to structures of gender equality, has been important to many transitional democracies in the CEE region.’19 This forced politicians to deal with gender equality, especially

182 The Challenges of EU Membership

legislation in that area, and it increased women’s expectations of the influence of the EU in CEEC: ‘Women from accessing countries . . . have great hopes associated with joining the EU. Most of all they hope for the introduction of democratic mechanisms, which would allow for implementing gender and economic justice on the national levels.’20 Furthermore, NGOs could use the existing EU legislation and prescriptions of the EU as a tool to put pressure on politicians to change things: ‘If we as women’s activists from NGOs are talking to them, we do use the EU as a very strong lobbying tool (because without the international pressure – mainly from the EU – our politicians wouldn’t even think about it.’21 Transformations took place on several levels. The most important change was the incorporation of EU legislation into national legislation. Several countries, among them the Czech Republic and Slovakia, had to pass new labour codes to encompass the EU legislation, which then included new legislation, e.g. legislation against sexual discrimination in the labour market. All ten new member states implemented chapter 13 of the acquis communautaire before accession. The positive influence of these legal changes is emphasized widely by people working in the area of gender equality. On the institutional level, too, many changes took place.22 Several countries had to create new institutions to deal with gender equality and gender mainstreaming. For example, in the Czech Republic a Government Council for Equal Opportunities was created to help shape gender equality policy; in Slovakia a subsection for equal opportunities in the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs was created for the same purpose. The introduction of these institutions was important in the process of EU accession, enabling the countries to work actively towards the transposition of EU legislation and the achievement of gender equality in general. In general the influence of the EU on the changes in the candidate countries since 1993 is regarded as far-reaching23 and positive: ‘The accession process, with its clear criteria for entry to the EU, has played a positive role in helping countries “to navigate” through the stormy waters of the transition process, thereby speeding up their economic and political transitions.’24 The formal implementation of the gender equality part of the acquis communautaire has taken place in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The nine directives have been transposed into national legislation. The further implementation of gender equality is supported by additional pre-accession measures of the EU. Both countries have reached the same goal: the implementation of chapter 13, ‘Employment and social affairs’ of the acquis, and accession in 2004. Nonetheless, there are differences in implementation on the level of the institutional structures, resources and sustainability. The Czech Republic had more time for the transmittance of the acquis since it was invited earlier than Slovakia for accession negotiations. The Czech Republic opened chapter 13 in September 1999 and implemented it in December 2002. Slovakia opened it in February 2001 and closed it also in December 2002. Therefore a much faster formal transformation took place in Slovakia.

Europeanization and Gender Equality 183

Slovakia had endured a political setback, since it was seen as antidemocratic25 and as a problem case under the authoritarian rule of Meciar. After the political change of 199826 Slovakia again welcomed the promise of EU accession. Therefore it had fewer years than the other candidate countries for changes, which these had already started.27 The Czech Republic, on the other hand, was one of the leading transformation countries amongst the CEE reform states.28 Thus the change here was much more intensive, and accompanied by additional measures.

Accession programmes of the EU Even though the legislative and institutional changes are the basis for achieving gender equality, other measures are needed for active application of the new legislation and implementation of gender equality. The accession strategy of the EU consisted of three main financing instruments: • Phare: focused on the implementation of the acquis and preparation for the Structural Funds, the most important support programme of the EU for candidate countries. • ISPA (Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-accession): preparation of the Cohesion Funds and support for traffic and environmental projects. • SAPARD (Special Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development): support of rural development and the adoption of the common agricultural policy. Gender equality projects were only funded by Phare, not by ISPA or SAPARD. Furthermore, some community programmes were open to the candidate countries, e.g. the 4th Framework strategy of the EU to further gender equality (1996–2000). The funded projects in the area of gender equality were mainly training workshops, seminars and conferences (see Table 11.1). The Czech Republic took part in the programmes with a specific focus on gender equality (Medium Term Community Action Strategy, EQUAL), whereas Slovakia only funded single projects and did not take part in these specific programs. Nonetheless, Slovakia joined the 5th Framework Strategy on Gender Equality and, after accession, took also part in EQUAL II and started a twinning project on gender mainstreaming. In both countries projects in the area of gender equality were made possible through politicians from socialist parties. On the whole, more projects in the Czech Republic than in Slovakia were realized in the area of gender equality before accession. Even after accession the Czech Republic continues with gender equality projects; therefore there is more continuity there than in Slovakia. The projects in Slovakia started later than in the Czech Republic, mainly after accession. The consequences of this difference in dealing with

Comparison of the EU projects implemented in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Community programmes

Programme

Czech Republic

Slovakia

EQUAL I (2001–2005)

1 project on gender equality (out of 10 selected projects): ‘Reconciliation of work and family life’, project leader: NGO Czech Women’s Union

Did not participate

4th Action Programme on Equal Opportunities for women and men (1996–2000)

3 projects: 1. Training of ministry officials (EuroProfis) 2. Brochures (Czech Women’s Union) 3. International conference (Agentura Gaia)

Did not participate

Community Programme on Gender Equality (2001–2005)

1 conference, end of 2004, Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs

2 projects: 1. International Centre for Family Studies: Human and citizen rights of women in Slovakia: on the way to equal opportunities; one publication and one conference 2002. 2. Research Institute of Labour, Social Affairs and Family entitled ‘Challenge for Social Inclusion: From Dependence to Work (scheme of social assistance and incentives for work)’ research and national conference in summer 2005

EIDHR I, II (European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights)

0 (ProFem: AdvoCats for women; provides legal counselling for women who are victims of domestic violence; lobbies for change in the existing legislation concerning domestic violence)

0

184

Table 11.1

Phare

Twinning

Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs: CZ1.08.01 ‘Twinning for the improvement of public and institutional mechanisms for the implementation of equal opportunities’, Sweden, 2002–2003

Access 1999–2001 (Strengthening of civil society and preparation for accession)

3 NGO projects ( ⫹ ProFem)

0 (1 project: women affected by abuse)

Phare small projects

1 project: ‘Women and information from the internet’, 2003, Czech Women’s Union

2 grants: 1. National Gender Centre: Gender mainstreaming: best practices and policies 29 November 2004, part of the pilot project in Slovakia on ‘gender mainstreaming in national policies and programmes, held in partnership of MoLSAF and UNDP, co-financed by Representation of the EC in Slovakia 2004/2005; duration 6 months; grant €5245, total eligible action costs: 78.65% 2. Stredoeuropská nadácia, Bratislava: Europe for Women – Women for Europe; 9 months; grant: €8100, total eligible costs 78%

Civil Society Development Programme

Supported several NGOs and gender equality projects; exact number not available

No specific gender equality projects

TAIEX (Technical Assistance Information Exchange Unit)

1998: seminar organized by TAIEX in Brussels on institution building in the area of gender equality for the then 11 candidate countries

Seminar by Sheila Wilde at MoLSAF: ‘Equality of treatment of men and women’, 2002 185

Compilation by the author.

186 The Challenges of EU Membership

gender equality is already apparent: in the Czech Republic small changes are noticeable, mainly on the institutional level, in Slovakia nearly none. Apart from the political factor mentioned above, that Slovakia started accession negotiations later than the Czech Republic, two other main factors can also be held accountable for the difference in implementation: first, the political system of the Czech Republic is influenced by secular-conservative opinions, whereas Slovakia is shaped by Catholic-conservative ideas. In the Czech Republic it has become the norm for women to work. In Slovakia, even though in most families it is not the norm or even impossible to live on the wage of just the husband/father, the image of the woman as a housewife is strongly supported and the idea of the traditional family is upheld. If people fear the destruction of the family and of tradition, it is difficult for them to understand or realize that measures for gender equality such as equal pay or anti-discrimination strategies are important. Furthermore, it limits the possibility for change on the political level. Second, the economic system in the Czech Republic is more stable than in Slovakia and unemployment is lower. In 2003 the unemployment rate in the Czech Republic was 5.9 per cent for men and 9.0 per cent for women, whereas in Slovakia the figure was more than 18 per cent for both men and women. The economic factors are influential since gender equality is sometimes regarded as a luxury to be added on later, after the economic and political changes have taken place. Nonetheless, since accession to the EU, Slovakia has started several gender equality projects. It remains to be seen if in the long run time is the only real influential factor explaining the difference in implementation.

Conclusion This chapter has outlined the pre-accession strategy and its impact on the two candidate countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, in the area of gender equality. The similarities and differences between the two countries were shown and explanations offered for the difference in implementation. Both countries implemented gender equality formally, which means they have incorporated EU legislation into national legislation. Nonetheless, gender equality in real life was not achieved at the same level: this is shown in the difference in the number of projects dealing with gender equality that were successfully carried out. If only the number of EU projects dealing with gender equality is taken into account, the Czech Republic has so far been more Europeanized than Slovakia, as more projects were completed.

Notes 1 Commission of the European Communities, COM(2003) 98 Final. Report from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: Annual report on Equal Opportunities for Women and Men in the European Union 2002 (Brussels, 2003), p. 3.

Europeanization and Gender Equality 187 2 Georgina Waylen, ‘Women and Democratization: Conceptualizing Gender Relations in Transition Politics’, World Politics 46 (1994), p. 344; see also Alena Heitlinger, ‘Women’s Equality, Work, and Family in the Czech Republic’, in Barbara ´Lobodzin´ska, ed., Family, Women, and Employment in Central-Eastern Europe (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1995), pp. 87–9. 3 Barbara Einhorn, Cinderella Goes to Market: Citizenship, Gender and Women’s Movements in East Central Europe (London: Verso, 1993), p. 5; Barbara L obodzin´ska. ‘Acknowledgements’, in L obodzin´ska, Family, Women, and Employment, p. xv; Sharon L. Wolchik, ‘Women and the politics of transition in the Czech and Slovak Republics’, in Marilyn Rueschmeyer, ed., Women in the Politics of Postcommunist Eastern Europe (New York: Sharpe, 1994), p. 221. 4 Christopher Puzey, ‘Creating a Civil Service in Post-Communist Poland: Domestic Interests, “Political Memory” and the Impact of Europeanization’, paper prepared for the ECPR General Conference, Marburg, Germany, 18–21 September 2003. http://www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr/events/generalconference/papers/15/2/Puzey.pdf., p. 4. 5 Verónica Tomei, Europäisierung nationaler Migrationspolitik: eine Studie zur Veränderung von Regieren in Europa (Stuttgart: Lucius und Lucius, 2001), p. 16. 6 Ulrike Liebert, ‘Gendering Europeanisation: Patterns and Dynamics’, in Ulrike Liebert, ed., Gendering Europeanisation (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2003), p. 260. 7 The candidate countries have to fulfil the Copenhagen Criteria, as follows:

´

´

• The political criterion: institutional stability, a democratic and constitutional system, protection of human rights as well as respect and protection of minorities. • The economic criterion: a functioning market economy and the capacity to withstand competition within the EU common market. • The ‘acquis criterion’: the capability to fulfil the responsibilities and aims of an EU member state, which means the incorporation of the acquis communautaire, the common EU legislation, about 80,000 pages of legislation, into national legislation (Federal Government of Germany, ‘Kopenhagener Kriterien’, in Regierung online, 2003. http://www.bundesregierung.de/emagazine_entw,454218/Kopenhagener-Kriterien.htm, p. 1. 8 In the area of gender equality, chapter 13, Labour and Social Affairs, of the acquis communautaire encompassed nine directives, which had to be transposed into national legislation, as well as several recommendations and suggestions. They deal mainly with gender equality on the labour market (equal pay for equal work, allowing women to work at night etc.). 9 Directorate-General for Education and Culture. European Commission, People on the Move: European Employment and Social Policy: a Policy for People (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2000), p. 24. 10 Europäische Kommission, Jahresbericht der Kommission: Chancengleichheit für Frauen und Männer in der Europäischen Union (Luxemburg: Amt für Amtliche Veröffentlichungen der Europäischen Gemeinschaften, 1998), p. 30. 11 Gillian Pascall and Nick Manning, ‘Social Europe East and West’, in Hilary Ingham und Mike Ingham, eds., EU Expansion to the East: Prospects and Problems (Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2002), p. 134. 12 Barbara L obodzikska, ‘The Family and Working Women During and After Socialist Industrialisation and Ideology’, in L obodzin´ska, Family, Women, and Employment, p. 3. 13 John S. Dryzek and Leslie Holmes, Post-communist Democratization: Political Discourse Across Thirteen Countries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 223.

´

´

188 The Challenges of EU Membership 14 Anneke Hudalla, Beitritt der Tschechischen Republik zur Europäischen Union: Eine Fallstudie zu den Auswirkungen der EU-Osterweiterung auf die finalité politique des europäischen Integrationsprozesses (Hamburg: Lit Verlag, 1996), p. 13. 15 For more on the policies and style of governing of the Meciar government, see Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, A History of Slovakia. The Struggle for Survival, 2nd edn (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 273–95. 16 Cameron Ross, ‘Introduction’, in Cameron Ross, ed., Perspectives on the Enlargement of the European Union (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. viii. 17 SCADplus, Zusammenfassung der Gesetzgebung: Erweiterung – Die Beitrittspartnerschaft mit der Tschechischen Union, 2002, europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/de/lvb/e40107.htm, p. 1. 18 SCADplus, Zusammenfassung der Gesetzgebung: Erweiterung – Einleitung, 2001. europa.eu.int/scadplus/leg/de/lvb/e40001.htm, p. 1. 19 Zuzana Jezerska, ‘Gender Awareness and the National Machineries in the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe’, in Shirin M. Rai, ed., Mainstreaming Gender, Democratizing the State? Institutional Mechanisms for the Advancement of Women (Manchester: Manchester University Press., 2003), p. 180. 20 Kinga Lohmann, ‘Dialogue on the Future of Europe: Visions and Reality in the Age of Globalization’, in Karat. Regional Network of Women’s NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe, 2002. karat.org/links/pages/Detailed/173.html, p. 1. 21 Michaela Marksova-Tominova, ‘What am I Expecting from the Future EU?’, in Karat. Regional Network of Women’s NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe, 2002. karat.org/eu_and_economy/michaela_tominova.html, p. 1. 22 Employment and Social Affairs, Equal Opportunities for Women and Men in the European Union: Annual Report 2000 (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 2001), p. 8. 23 Rüdiger Kipke, Die politischen Systeme Tschechiens und der Slowakei: Eine Einführung (Wiesbaden: Westdeutscher Verlag, 2002). 24 Lenka Anna Rovna, ‘The Enlargement of the European Union: The Case of the Czech Republic’, in Ross, Perspectives, p. 194 ff. 25 Caroline Robertson-Wensauer, ‘Slowakei heute: Standort zwischen Gründung und Regierungswechsel’, in Caroline Robertson-Wensauer, ed., Slowakei: Gesellschaft im Aufbruch: Nation – Kultur – Wirtschaft (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1999), p. 11. 26 Ivo Samson, Discussion Paper: Der widerspruchsvolle Weg der Slowakei in die EU. Die Slowakei vor der Marginalisierung in Zentraleuropa? (Bonn: Zentrum für Europäische Integrationsforschung, 1999), p. 27. 27 Ibid., p. 32. 28 Kipke, Die politischen Systeme Tschechiens, p. 45.

12 Poland and the EU Constitutional Convention An Schrijvers

Introduction In December 2003, during the Italian presidency, the intergovernmental conference (IGC) on the constitutional treaty for the enlarged European Union (EU) failed. One of the countries leading the impasse in the negotiations was Poland. Together with the Spanish representatives, the Polish delegation stubbornly refused to come to a compromise on the new weighting of votes in the Council, as proposed by the Convention. In doing so, the Poles seemed to confirm the expectations about them in many member states, where fears of an unmanageable enlarged EU were increasingly voiced.1 Before they officially entered the EU, some people believed that the candidate countries from Central Europe (CEC) would indeed behave as antifederalists after accession. With a sizeable number of Eurosceptical parties in parliament, reflecting increasing Euroscepticism among the population, it was expected that many of them, especially Poland, would defend their sovereignty to a maximum degree and be reluctant to hand over more power to the supranational level. Surprisingly enough, half a year later, in July 2004, two months after the official entry of this alleged Eurosceptical country, an agreement was reached rather smoothly on the same controversial issue. The objective of this chapter is not to explain why the first summit on the EU constitutional treaty failed and the second under the Irish presidency succeeded. The reasons for this are manifold and others have dealt with it.2 The main purpose is to analyse the participation of the Polish delegates in the Convention to determine to what extent the role they played corresponds to the stereotypes that the first intergovernmental conference (IGC) fiasco seemed to confirm. Our main argument is that the Polish view on the future of Europe was much more balanced than is generally assumed in some parts of Europe. As will be demonstrated, the vision on the EU of the Polish delegates during the debate clearly spoke of a balance between the intergovernmental and the community method. By acting in this way, they went beyond the expectations 189

190 The Challenges of EU Membership

of some member states. Instead of behaving as convinced anti-federalists, they defended a far-reaching community approach in some policy areas.

The Convention The main tasks, organization and characteristics of the Convention differed to a great extent from normal intergovernmental treaty negotiations in the EU. The European Council in Laeken had called the Convention into life in order to prepare a new constitutional treaty for the enlarged Europe.3 The Amsterdam and Nice Treaties had not been satisfactory and had left a number of issues on the table. With the upcoming enlargement, the leaders of the EU felt increasing pressure to resolve these ‘leftovers’. They established for this purpose a broad Europe-wide forum or Convention. It had to address a host of questions ranging from the complexity of the decision-making system and the incorporation of the charter of fundamental rights to the abolition of the pillar structure and the role of the national parliaments in the EU. The debate started on 1 March 2002 and had a one-and-a-half-year period to draw up a final document in preparation for the 2004 IGC.4 The main problems the Convention had to tackle were: (1) a simplification of the Union’s instruments and decision-making system in anticipation of the upcoming enlargement; (2) a better division and definition of the Union’s powers including a debate on the global role of the EU-25; and (3) more democracy, transparency and efficiency so as to bring the EU closer to its citizens. The Convention met in Brussels regularly. In contrast with the practice of the IGC, all its discussions and official documents were in the public domain.5 The forum consisted of 105 full members in total: 15 representatives of the heads of state or government (one per state) and 30 representatives of the national parliaments (two per state) from the member states; 13 representatives of the heads of state or government (one per state – besides the ten countries that entered the EU on 1 May 2004, also Bulgaria, Romania and Turkey) and 26 representatives of the national parliaments from the candidate states (two per state); 16 members of the European Parliament (the candidate countries had no delegates in the EP yet), two representatives of the European Commission, one chairman (Valéry Giscard d’Estaing), and two vice-chairmen (Giuliano Amato and Jean-Luc Dehaene). The three-person presidency did not represent anyone. They were intended to be an independent motor and framework for the Convention. Each full member (except for the chairman and his vice-chairmen) was shadowed by an alternate or substitute, effectively nearly doubling the numbers involved. These alternates had more or less full participation rights and many of them engaged as much in the debate as the full members.6 In addition to the members, observers were invited to the Convention: three representatives from the Economic and Social Committee, six observers from the Committee of the Regions, three delegates representing the social partners, and the European Ombudsman.

Poland and the EU Constitutional Convention 191

The fact that the candidate countries were granted participation in the Convention before their accession was the result of the Laeken deal. This consisted of a typical EU compromise between intergovernmentalists and supranationalists. The first had insisted on the full participation of the CEC in the Convention in the belief that their representatives would become potential allies. The latter claimed in turn a special clause which limited the impact of the acceding countries in the Convention. They felt that the CEC would not be ‘able to prevent any consensus which may emerge among the member states’.7 Some authors define the representatives of the candidate countries as ‘guests’ of the Convention.8 In practice, though, the clause made no difference, as it never actually came to a vote in the Convention. This was because the Convention used deliberation based on consensus. In this regard, it differed a great deal from the practice of bargaining, typical of a traditional IGC.9 Another characteristic in which the Convention differed from the intergovernmental method was that its members were in theory apolitical. They did not have a mandate and could express their personal views. Giscard d’Estaing pointed out the importance of this feature in his inaugural speech in Brussels on 28 February 2002: The members . . . of our Convention must not regard themselves simply as spokespersons for those who appointed them . . . Each person will of course remain loyal to his or her brief, but must make his or her personal contribution to the work of the Convention. . . . It needs to become the melting-pot in which, month by month, a common approach is worked out. . . . the members of the Convention will have to turn towards each other and gradually foster a ‘Convention spirit.’10 The Convention was meant to be a kind of supranational institution (similar to the Commission), in which national interests and the search for the lowest common denominator were left at home. These were made subordinate to the search for the common European good. The reason behind this procedure was partly to curb the member states’ monopoly of treaty reform and give more power to the supranational level, the European Parliament (EP) and the Commission. This succeeded to a certain degree: a sense of community, of shared values and identity was felt among the Convention members. Some delegates even went so far as to describe the Convention as a ‘family.’11 In practice, however, especially towards the end of the Convention, national interests increasingly started dominating the debate and the ‘spirit’ was somewhat lost. The stance of the delegates was increasingly debated and prepared in the national parliaments and governments. This restricted their room for manoeuvre. Where many EU governments had originally considered the Convention as a kind of discussion club of little importance since the main decision had to be taken at the IGC, towards the end they started taking it more seriously, especially when controversial institutional questions were

192 The Challenges of EU Membership

discussed. They scrutinized and even replaced their initial delegates and put more ‘reliable’ persons in their place.12 The different governments did this because they were afraid that the Convention would put them before a fait accompli, which would be difficult to change afterwards, as their representatives had been part of it. Due to these changes, the Convention increasingly reflected the national priorities of the different states and in the end clearly became a debate between supranationalists and intergovernmentalists, like a normal IGC.13 The special clause notwithstanding, the candidate countries’ delegates were treated in the same way as their counterparts from the member states. Their remarks and proposals were taken as seriously as those of the member states’ delegates. After all, the candidate countries also had to ratify the final constitutional treaty, according to the Copenhagen Council decision of December 2002. This does not mean that in practice the candidate countries were not in a weaker position than the member states. They were. First, they could not choose delegates among members of the EP, because before accession they did not yet have Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). This was not only a quantitative disadvantage (one delegate fewer than the EU-15) but also a qualitative one, as these parliamentarians were well versed in EU matters and considered Brussels as their second home. The candidate countries could only delegate one government representative and two national parliamentarians; the latter lacked any European experience. Just like their colleagues from the member states, they found themselves in the weakest position. As they had to fly to Brussels every month, they had little or no opportunity to have regular meetings with their international colleagues. Nor were they backed by an efficient administration as the government representatives were. A second disadvantage for the candidate countries was the timing of the Convention. They were still negotiating with the EU on accession and were therefore primarily concerned with implementing all the necessary conditions for accession, rather than thinking about the future of Europe. A last minor disadvantage for the acceding countries was that they had to supply their own interpreters, even though they were allowed to use their mother tongue. There was some inequality in practice in the Convention, which was to the disadvantage of the new member states, or, as Klaus Bachmann indicates, there was some ‘hierarchy’.14 In the analysis of the Polish participation, these features of the Convention must be taken into account, as they situate the Polish actors and help explain their behaviour.

The Polish role in the Convention To see how far the stereotypes commonly heard in Western Europe during the accession process of the CEC are reflected in the behaviour of the Polish representatives, it is necessary first to identify these beliefs and see how they appeared in the Convention. One of the stereotypes, which existed in Western

Poland and the EU Constitutional Convention 193

Europe about the acceding CEC, was that they were extremely attached to their recently regained independence. This is what their nationalistic discourse during the accession process seemed to suggest. Therefore they would be reluctant to deepen integration and hand over more powers to Brussels. They were expected to oppose firmly the strengthening of the community method and in this way they would become natural allies of the Eurosceptics. As mentioned earlier, it was exactly because of this belief that the European intergovernmentalists had insisted on their participation in Laeken.15 These assumptions about the CEC led to the formulation of three hypotheses about the expected Polish behaviour in the Convention, which are tested below. Hypothesis 1: low activity by the Polish delegates in the debate As a result of their anti-federalist attitude, acceding member states’ representatives were expected to keep silent in order to reserve their arguments for the upcoming IGC, convinced that the Convention was no more than a discussion club preparing for the IGC. As the CEC were still in the final and most controversial phase of the accession negotiations when the Convention started, it was expected that they would remain rather passive and cautious in the debate, unwilling to unveil their opinions for fear of negative repercussions during the accession negotiations. They would try ‘to be on their best behaviour’ in order to ease the final negotiations, or at least not to complicate them. In this regard, they were supposed to be susceptible to influences from the more experienced delegates, especially in the first half of the Convention, when they themselves were still ‘green’. This hypothesis can be easily tested by counting the number of contributions, amendments and speeches the Polish delegates made. The results of this quantitative analysis (presented in Tables 12.1 to 12.3) show that the three full Polish delegates16 were not passive at all. On the contrary, they were diligent in proposing amendments, putting forward contributions, and outlining their main points in the plenary sessions of the Convention. One of the Polish representatives, Danuta Hübner, was especially active. Table 12.1 Number of contributions by the six Polish delegates (found with the search function of the official Convention website)

Danuta Hübner (full member) Józef Oleksy (full member) Edmund Wittbrodt (full member) Janusz Trzci´nski (alternate) Marta Fogler (alternate) Genowefa Grabowska (alternate)

Personal

Bilateral*

Group

Total

4 1 1 1 1 0

0 0 4 0 4 0

8 9 12 7 9 9

12 10 17 8 14 9

* The bilateral column refers to the close cooperation between Wittbrodt and Fogler (both from opposition party PO) in putting forward contributions.

194 The Challenges of EU Membership Table 12.2 Number of speeches/interventions in the 27 plenary sessions by the six Polish delegates (based on the verbatim reports of the EP) Speeches Danuta Hübner Józef Oleksy Edmund Wittbrodt Janusz Trzci´nski Marta Fogler Genowefa Grabowska

19 15 15 0 4 2

Table 12.3 Number of amendments (found with the search function of the official Convention website)

Danuta Hübner Józef Oleksy Edmund Wittbrodt Janusz Trzci´nski Marta Fogler Genowefa Grabowska

Personal

Bilateral*

Group

Total

80 22 7 0 0 0

0 2 16 0 16/17 0

4 6 112 0 112 9

84 30 135 0 128 9

* Bilateral refers to amendments on the initiative of both Oleksy and Grabowska (both members of the ruling SLD), or on the initiative of both Wittbrodt and Fogler (both members of the opposition party PO). A column labelled ‘Trilateral’ could have been added to represent the cooperation between Oleksy, Grabowska and Hübner, but these are considered as group amendments in order not to complicate matters.

The numbers for the Polish delegates have to be examined in the context of the total number of contributions, amendments and speeches of other delegates. This is a difficult, if not impossible, task; for this reason; the analysis in Table 12.4 juxtaposes only the numbers of contributions (not of the amendments or speeches) of the three Polish delegates (not their alternates) with the number of contributions of randomly selected Convention members. The number of contributions by Hübner is compared with that of her counterparts, the government representatives of the EU-15 and of the candidate states. The number of contributions by Józef Oleksy and Edmund Wittbrodt is juxtaposed with the number of contributions from their counterparts, the national parliament representatives of the EU-15 and from the other candidate states.17 Klaus Bachmann examined the number of contributions from the other candidate member states’ delegations and analysed the participation of the eight CEC in the Convention that entered the EU on 1 May 2004. For each of these countries, he counted the contributions of the government representatives and those of one of the two national parliament representatives.18

Poland and the EU Constitutional Convention 195 Table 12.4 perspective

Number of Polish contributions in comparative EU-15 and CEC

Personal Danuta Hübner EU-15 (government representatives) Jacques Santer (Luxemburg) Lena Hjelm-Wallén (Sweden) Ernâni Lopes (Portugal) CEC (government representatives) Péter Balázs (Hungary) Ivan Korcok (Slovakia) Sandra Kalniete (Latvia) Lennart Meri (Estonia) Rytis Martikonis (Lithuania) Jan Kohout (Czech Republic) Dimitrij Rupel (Slovenia) Józef Oleksy Edmund Wittbrodt*

4

8

no average available 0 11 3 15 1 7 0.875 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 5

EU-15 (national parliament representatives) Josep Borrel Fontelles (Spain) 1 Karel De Gucht (Belgium) 2 Elio Di Rupo (Belgium) 0 Peter Skaarup (Denmark) 0 Frans Timmermans (Netherlands) 1 Gisela Stuart (United Kingdom) 1 CEC (national parliament representatives)** József Szájer (Hungary) Ján Figel (Slovakia) Rihards Piks (Latvia) Tunne Kelam (Estonia) Vytenis Andriukaitis (Lithuania) Jan Zahradil (Czech Republic) Jelko Kacin (Slovenia)

Group

1/1.625 1 0 0 1 5 0 0

7.5 9 6 5 14 7 6 5 9 12

Total 12 10.4 11 18 8 8.375 9 6 6 14 8 7 5 10 17

no average available 6 7 11 13 8 8 7 7 6 7 5 6 8.5/8.875 11 7 8 7 12 8 6

9.5/11.25 12 7 8 8 17 8 6

* Wittbrodt’s bilateral contributions with Fogler are counted here as personal contributions. ** The average is first calculated with the contributions of Oleksy and then with the contributions of Wittbrodt. The latter gives significantly higher averages.

In another study, Andreas Maurer19 calculated an average of 10.4 contributions for the EU-15 member states’ government representatives. As this source could not be retrieved, the method Maurer used to arrive at this average could not be checked. Nevertheless, presuming that Maurer’s calculations are correct and that he included both personal and group contributions in his research, Hübner scored two contributions (12) above the EU-15 government

196 The Challenges of EU Membership

representatives’ average (10.4) and four more than her counterparts in the CEC (8.375). It is worth underlining that one-third of her contributions are personal initiatives. The number of contributions of the two other Polish delegates is similar to that of their counterparts in the EU-15 and is higher than the CEC average. The contributions of the Polish delegates do not confirm the first hypothesis. They were not passive at all. On the contrary, Hübner was even more active than the EU average. In this respect, the Polish Convention representatives sharply contrasted with the other CEC representatives, who according to David Král and Bachmann kept a low profile in the Convention, especially at the beginning.20 Fraser Cameron and Antoinette Primatarova, who studied the accession states in the Convention on their contributions on the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), reach a similar conclusion.21 Where the other CEC kept a low profile, the Polish representatives were very active and assertive, also on issues such as foreign affairs. According to Rafal´ Trzaskowski, this can be explained by the difference in human resources for which Poland, as a big country, is better off than the other relatively small candidate states, and by the far-reaching EU aspirations of this country which has the potential of becoming a powerful EU member.22 Hypothesis 2: the Polish group spoke with one voice It was expected that the delegates, coming from a rather anti-federalistminded state, would unite and speak with one Polish voice. They were supposed to behave as if they were given a mandate to attend an IGC, rather than a Convention, where members sought consensus through deliberation. This meant that the government delegate and the delegates of the Polish parliament, independent or detached from their political party, would form a ‘Polish group’, rather than take part in transnational ideological joint actions, proposed by corresponding European political parties. It was expected that the other Polish representatives would regularly support the position of the government representative because he had his administration behind him. This meant that the three Polish delegates and their three alternates were supposed to make several joint contributions or sign the same joint contributions of the others. This hypothesis can be tested quantitatively by counting the number of joint contributions and amendments, and qualitatively by looking at the content of separate individual contributions of the Polish delegates and comparing them. Evaluating the hypothesis quantitatively, there was only one amendment that was a group initiative of all six Polish delegates and alternates, independent of their party affiliation. This joint amendment proposal concerned the reference to Christian values in the preamble of the constitutional draft and received the support of another 31 Convention members.23 Only four joint contributions initiated by other Convention members were supported by all six Polish delegates. One contribution concerned ‘The initiative for the

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incorporation of the Charter of fundamental Rights into the European Constitution’.24 The second referred to the ‘Proposal submitted to the Convention on transparency’ by Danish MEP Jens-Peter Bonde,25 which proposed the inclusion into the Constitution of the procedure for derogations from openness and transparency, already adopted by the European Parliament in the Martin–Bourlanges report, signed by 168 members and alternatives of the Convention. The third concerned the same proposal on transparency, submitted by Bonde on 10 July 2003 and signed by 200 delegates.26 The fourth concerned the initiative of Bonde that ‘every member state shall have one representative each in the commission’,27 supported by 118 members in total. Although Bonde was known in the Convention for his Eurosceptical views, his four contributions, supported by the Polish delegates as a group, do not support his anti-federalist opinion. Of all 84 amendments proposed by Hübner, representing the Polish government, only three were supported by two other Polish representatives, Grabowska and Oleksy, both members of the same Polish political party, the ruling SLD (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej – Democratic Left Alliance). The representatives of the Polish centre-right opposition party PO (Platforma Obywatelska – Civic Platform), Fogler and Wittbrodt did not support these amendments. Instead, they supported the majority of amendment proposals and contributions of the European People’s Party (EPP), a Christian Democratic party. They worked in close cooperation with it and made several bilateral contributions. In light of the hypothesis about the emergence of a Polish group, this is meaningful. Rather than following the Polish government position, Fogler and Wittbrodt followed the EPP. By seeking transnational cooperation, they did not confirm the hypothesis of a united Polish voice. Despite these quantitative results, it is possible that the Polish delegates spoke with a similar voice or expressed the same opinions on certain issues independently of each other. In order to check this, a content analysis of their contributions and speeches is needed.28 The results of this qualitative analysis point to consistency among the Polish members. On a number of issues, their basic ideas were similar, although the proposed methods and solutions were at times different. Although they made only one joint contribution, signed only four other joint contributions, and hardly supported their governmental representative, they often expressed similar opinions. It is interesting that they did not make a joint contribution on the issue of weighting the votes in the Council. This was an issue that was equally or more important to Poland at the IGC than the Christian reference in the preamble. The fact they did not form a Polish front on this controversial item, not even at the very end of the Convention, when the intergovernmental approach generally prevailed, contradicted the hypothesis of the emergence of a Polish group, defending national interests. The opinions that the Polish delegates shared do not confirm a hypothesis of anti-federalism either.

198 The Challenges of EU Membership

Hypothesis 3: the Polish delegation was anti-federalist A third hypothesis to test is whether the Polish delegates behaved as antifederalist delegates. Although the gap between federalists and anti-federalists is somewhat blurred as both exist in varying degrees across the various EU pillars and countries,29 the distinction is made here for operational reasons. In terms of the Convention this meant that an anti-federalist Convention delegate was someone who wanted to reduce the power of the EP to the advantage of the Council, or alternatively of the national parliaments; was in favour of the intergovernmental approach; wanted the Commission to share the right of initiative with the member states and reduce its democratic legitimization; opposed the extension of qualified majority voting (QMV) and fought to keep the veto power in the Council; was against enhanced cooperation; was sceptical about handing over more powers to the supranational level such as the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) and Social Policy, and pleaded for flexibility in these areas; used the term ‘Constitutional Treaty’ or ‘Treaty’ and avoided words such as ‘federation’. A federalist delegate was someone who wanted more power for the EP (extension of co-decision); was a supporter of the community method; tried to reserve the right of initiative for the Commission and wanted a stronger democratic legitimization for it; wanted the extension of qualified majority voting in the Council; supported enhanced cooperation; was enthusiastic about developing policy areas such as CFSP, ESDP, JHA, Social Europe and wanted compelling measures in these fields; and used the terms ‘Constitution’ and ‘federal’. As the new CEC were behind the EU-15 in most policy areas, it was expected that their delegates would plead for flexibility (such as the open coordination method) and solidarity in these areas (environment, social policy). Similarly, they were supposed to oppose enhanced cooperation, as it was seen by them as an attempt to keep the Cold War division alive, reducing them to second-class membership in the periphery of Europe. The general assumption before enlargement in some EU states was that the CEC saw the EU primarily and solely as an economic union, and would refuse to support its ambitions for a CFSP and ESDP.30 In order to get a more accurate view of which criteria are confirmed and which are refuted, a detailed content analysis of the contributions and speeches of the Polish delegates is needed. While the criteria are interconnected, they are handled separately. This systematic way of working makes it possible to draw a line between the interventions, which are rather antifederalist minded, and those which are rather federalist minded. The Polish delegates often expressed similar opinions in different policy areas, which simplifies the analysis. On the other hand, there is more than once confusion and incoherence, complicating the research. The Polish delegates often made contradictory statements, while withdrawing and changing

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previous positions. To illustrate this point, Oleksy constantly ‘zigzagged’ during the Convention between the community and the intergovernmental approach. This is surprising as he was a member of the ruling SLD with executive experience and was expected to cooperate with, or at least consult, the Polish government representative. One expected him to have a rather fixed, well-considered view in line with the official position of this party. This was not the case. At first he defended the retention of the three pillars, then he demanded their abolition. Once he wanted more EU powers, then he was very cautious about taking away powers of the member states. This kind of behaviour suggests that he was sometimes not aware of the consequences certain decisions would have for Poland, due to the fact that its administration was still in transformation and adaptation to the EU membership requirements. He went through a kind of learning process. Alternatively, it suggests that he had not yet made up his mind whether Poland, being a country with a high democratic but low economic potential, would be better off playing the intergovernmental rather than the community card. Or, increasing government controls may explain his shifts. As already mentioned, the debate became more intergovernmental towards the end, when the institutional questions were handled. The Polish delegates were not insensitive to this general trend. In this respect they all contradicted themselves on the definition of QMV in the Council.31 At the beginning of 2003, Oleksy signed a joint contribution on the initiative of British MEP Andrew Duff, called ‘Key elements of Institutional Reform’.32 This document firmly stated that ‘QMV must be the norm’ and that this ‘QMV should be determined as a majority of member states representing a majority of the population of the Union’. This meant that Oleksy supported the double majority, instead of the triple majority of Nice. Four days later he repeated this claim.33 However, four months later, he contradicted himself and withdrew his previous statements by arguing in the plenary session that the Nice formula should not be changed at all, as it ‘could become a source of great controversy, hampering the agreements on issues of great constitutional importance’.34 It is unlikely that Oleksy signed Duff’s joint contribution merely in order to be a ‘good convention delegate’. The fact that some signatories opposed particular statements in the joint contributions (signalled in the footnotes of the document) means that these controversial parts were discussed among the signatories. Oleksy did not formulate any exception and repeated the same stance a few days later, which proves his conviction. That he changed his opinion abruptly afterwards has probably more to do with the increasing influence the Polish government and political scene exerted on him. In the months preceding the accession referendum on 7–8 June 2003, the domestic Polish Euro-debate became increasingly polarized due to the presence of some hard anti-European opposition forces in the Polish parliament.35 The same is true for Wittbrodt. Similarly to Oleksy, he contradicted himself on the QMV issue. Together with Fogler and Grabowska he signed the joint

200 The Challenges of EU Membership

contribution ‘Premises and principles of EU institutional reform’ in which a ‘simple double majority (majority of EU population and majority of Member states)’ should be the rule ‘when the Council uses qualified majority’.36 The three Polish delegates did not formulate any disagreement on this point of the contribution, whereas five other signatories of the document did. This seems to suggest that Polish support for the double majority at that moment was well considered. Two and a half months later, on 15 May 2003, which is one month before the accession referendum, Wittbrodt stated in the plenary session that ‘the Nice compromise voting system should be fully respected’. The speeches by Hübner on the definition of QMV demonstrate a similar confusion. On 20 January 2003, she is reported to have said in the plenary session that ‘It is also worth reconsidering the triple system of voting introduced in the Nice Treaty. A double majority – of votes and citizens – would be a much more transparent way to make decisions.’37 As this part of her intervention is only found in the Polish sources and not in the verbatim report of the EP,38 it is assumed that Hübner did not say this in the plenary session because of increasing domestic pressure.39 Four months later, on 28 May 2003, Hübner signed together with nine other government representatives the document A Union Constitution for All – a Success for the Convention, which stated that whereas Nice was not perfect, it would be best not to give it up.40 Two weeks earlier, on 15 May 2003, she stated similarly that ‘re-opening the wellbalanced Nice compromise . . . would mean opening up the mythological Pandora’s Box with new controversies and endless negotiations. However, we should leave to the European Council the possibility to decide unanimously on these issues in the future.’41 In several statements Hübner nevertheless gave the impression that she herself, as the Polish Minister of European Affairs, did not support the retention of the Nice system. She seemed to distance herself from it and only warned the other delegates that her government would try to keep the QMV system of Nice unchanged. In the plenary session on 9 July 2003, she stated that ‘if we are to remain faithful to the community spirit, we have to be prepared to embrace firmly qualified majority voting. It is far more important than the definition of the qualified majority voting, where, as you know, my government will strongly argue in favour of the retaining of the system agreed at Nice.’42 A month earlier, Hübner warned the delegates in a similar way.43 All three full Polish delegates changed their opinion on the definition of QMV. Although this is not a sound criterion for being anti-federalist or federalist minded,44 the shift nevertheless seems to suggest that the delegates became increasingly anti-federalist on this issue. In this way they predicted the IGC fiasco of December 2003. Increasing pressure from the domestic political scene (polarization in the run-up to the referendum) probably caused these shifts, rather than personal changes of opinion resulting from increasing EU knowledge. Besides these factors, other ones also have to be taken into account when attempting to explain the Polish delegate statements, such as

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high susceptibility to influence from other delegates; a strong sense of ‘Convention spirit’; or an initial lack of media and parliament attention in Poland, allowing the delegates more personal freedom in the beginning. Anyway, whatever the explanation, the incoherence of the Polish delegates obliges us to a cautious interpretation of their statements in the content analysis below, starting with the issue of less or more power for the EP and the national parliaments. All Polish delegates were in favour of a bigger role for the EP in the EU decision-making process. Fogler and Wittbrodt devoted their contributions on the ‘Simplification of the legislative and budgetary procedures of the EU’45 primarily on this issue. Like the other Polish delegates, they wanted to grant the EP more power in the EU budgetary procedures, particularly in the procedure to define the financial framework. In the matter of the annual budget, Hübner did not see a need to increase the role of the EP.46 All Polish delegates insisted on the extension of the co-decision procedure in the legislative field, going hand in hand with QMV in the Council.47 They were all in favour of a more prominent role for the national parliaments in the EU decision-making process. Oleksy wanted this role to become ‘institutionalised’.48 This meant for him concretely ‘involving sectoral committees of the national parliaments in the work of the European parliament’s committees’. He foresaw regular meetings in the future between the sectoral committees of the national parliaments (for example on defence) with the corresponding commission of the EP. He did not define the sectors or areas of these common interests. Hübner also wanted to give ‘further thought to institutionalizing the contact between national and European parliaments’.49 Next to a scrutiny of their corresponding governments in EU-related issues within the national framework, she saw a unique task for the national parliaments in monitoring and checking the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality. This idea was already mentioned in the collective contribution Hübner signed ‘on the issue of the division of competence’ together with the government representatives of Germany (Peter Glotz), the United Kingdom (Peter Hein), Ireland (Ray MacSharry) and France (Pierre Moscovici).50 Similar principles were also proposed in a joint contribution, signed by Oleksy and Wittbrodt,51 and turned up again in a new version of the collective contribution on ‘Reforming the Institutions: Principles and Premises’,52 signed by Hübner in March 2003. This document even suggests a role for the national parliaments in electing the President of the Commission. Nevertheless, she underlined in her personal contribution not ‘to overburden’ the role of the national parliaments. Both national and European institutions have to be able to work efficiently. To insist on a more prominent role for the supranational EP in the decisionmaking process was typical of the community approach. Trying to increase the influence of the national parliaments, on the contrary, reflected an intergovernmental approach. Whereas the Polish government in its nationalist discourse before the Convention seemed to prefer the intergovernmental

202 The Challenges of EU Membership

approach, and opposed the community method,53 its representatives in the Convention left these positions and tackled the sovereignty issue in a different way. Instead of openly opposing the community method, they promoted more influence for the national parliaments.54 Nevertheless, they did not promote this in group, but in separate (joint), contributions. Another question that needs to be examined is whether the Polish delegates were in favour of the intergovernmental or the community method. A result as ambiguous as above was achieved if one takes a look at the literal references the Polish delegates made to the two methods. They considered both approaches equally important, although they were of the opinion that ‘the community method requires strengthening’ in the enlarged EU, as Oleksy stated in his intervention in the plenary session of 21 March 2002.55 The Polish delegates defended the community method in those areas from which Poland highly benefited such as the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the Cohesion Policy. In policies that were rather sensitive for the country, such as taxation, they opposed it. In other policies, they foresaw a carefully considered balance between both methods. To illustrate, Hübner described the CFSP as ‘one of those areas which is not entirely intergovernmental and, most likely, will not become a pure Community policy either. It will have to combine, therefore, the best of both worlds.’56 One of the features of the community method is to give the Commission more power in the future. Hübner was in favour of this, even though she was a government representative. She signed the joint contribution ‘Reforming the Institutions: Principles and Premises’, which stated that the Commission ‘must remain a strong supranational, independent and collegial body. It must keep its sole right of initiative in what is presently known as the first pillar, but it must also be allocated a stronger role of initiative in the current second and third pillars’.57 In order to give the Commission more democratic legitimacy, she foresaw a bigger role for the EP in the election of the Commission President. Oleksy shared her view on this in the plenary session of 15 May 2003.58 However, on 20 January 2003, Hübner wanted at the same time that ‘everything possible should be done to avoid unnecessary politicization of the European Commission. . . . One way to avoid such a situation would be to base the selection of candidates on the support of a given number of Members of the European Parliament rather than the support of the political groups.’59 Four months later in the plenary session, Hübner suggested that ‘the European Council should at least propose two candidates for Parliament to choose from’. She also wanted a strong President of the Commission with ‘more power and freedom to organise the work of the college’. Finally, in the same speech, she defended the principle of a commissioner for each country, as she did ‘not see the inevitability of the direct negative link between size and efficiency’.60 Wittbrodt, in the same plenary session, defended the opposite: ‘From the point of view of efficiency and quality, the number of commissioners

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should not depend on the number of countries.’61 Oleksy, in his turn, proposed to keep the rule of each country, one commissioner.62 All three full Polish delegates wanted more power for the Commission in the future, which was typical of a Euro-enthusiastic conventionnel. Similarly, they all favoured more democratic legitimization for the Commission. Only Hübner expressed some scepticism. In this way, the Polish delegates did not confirm expectations. On the other hand, they disagreed on the number of commissioners. Oleksy and Hübner stuck to the principle of one country, one commissioner, which was not supported by Wittbrodt. Although the number of commissioners is not a criterion as such of anti-federalist or federalist views, one could argue that Oleksy and Hübner tended to be more intergovernmental than Wittbrodt in this regard. On the question of being against or in favour of the extension of QMV in the Council, all Polish delegates defended an extension of the QMV and codecision in the enlarged EU to nearly all policy areas (including ESDP, JHA, CFSP), while restricting the unanimity rule to a minimum of areas. In one of her final interventions in the plenary session in June 2003, Hübner underlined the importance of this as follows: ‘if we are to remain faithful to the community spirit, we have to be prepared to firmly embrace qualified majority voting. As a matter of fact, this is the single most important condition of enhanced efficiency.’63 There was, however, a minimum of areas in which unanimity should be preserved. On 3 June 2003, Hübner contributed to a document in which she opposed the application of QMV in the areas of administrative cooperation and tax fraud.64 The fact that all Polish delegates were in favour of the extension of QMV and co-decision made them proponents of the community method. Yet this is a too simplistic deduction and should not be overstated. Nearly all 105 full delegates agreed on this from the beginning of the debate. That is why it seems unlikely that the Poles would have opposed it.65 That they opposed it for the time being in sensitive areas such as taxation and social policy (like the British delegates) was an acceptable and reasonable demand from the Polish point of view (high unemployment rates, transition economy). Whereas the Polish government before the Convention was sceptical about enhanced cooperation, which was generally considered as a way to keep the Cold War divide alive,66 all the Polish delegates in the Convention were in favour of this principle, as long as it remained inclusive and transparent to all. All Polish delegates supported the enhanced cooperation mechanism, even in the sphere of CFSP and ESDP. Hübner stated in the plenary session of 9 July 2003 that she was ‘a believer in the principle of enhanced cooperation’ concerning the CFSP.67 Two months earlier, on 16 May 2003, she had supported ‘extending the mechanism of enhanced cooperation to the sphere of security and defence’.68 Once again, the Polish delegates contradicted the hypothesis in this regard.

204 The Challenges of EU Membership

Contrary to expectations, the Polish delegates were all in favour of more effective action in the policies of JHA, CFSP and ESDP, and expressed rather radical views on these areas. At the very beginning of the Convention, Oleksy had wanted the ESDP to become a real area of EU competence, which as a side-effect would give the EU more legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens, in the belief that ‘[t]he power that does protect is regarded as our own and can be better understood in daily activity’.69 Nearly all Polish delegates supported the ESDP as long as it respected the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and did not lead to unnecessary duplication or rivalry. Almost all insisted on a reference to NATO and close and lasting cooperation with the USA. Only Fogler did not share this aim, by stating that ‘NATO’s role as a security provider for Europe has changed. The geopolitical focus of the USA has moved in the direction of Asia. Therefore the European Union needs its own defence capabilities.’70 On the other hand, all Polish delegates opposed ‘structured cooperation’ in ESDP. This is a variant of enhanced cooperation applicable to ESDP initiated by the ‘Gang of Four’ – Belgium, Germany, France and Luxemburg. They opposed it because of its more exclusive rules, by which it would become ‘an exclusive form of cooperation in military matters’,71 according to Oleksy. Wittbrodt and Fogler agreed with him as the proposed procedure risked breaking the principle of openness.72 When a member state wishes to participate in this structured cooperation, the Council will first deliberate on the request, but finally only the states already taking part in structured cooperation shall decide on the request. If these do not want to cooperate, the given state is excluded. That is why Hübner believed ‘that structured cooperation could be safely brought under the umbrella of the general enhanced cooperation provisions’.73 She ‘would prefer it in the form of a common European institution and not in the form of a new restrictive structure’.74 So the Polish delegates did support enhanced cooperation in ESDP, as long as it remained inclusive for all member states, including the less prosperous ones. They neither saw a contradiction ‘in including the whole area of Common Foreign and Security Policy in the mechanism of enhanced cooperation’, as Wittbrodt stated.75 On 20 December 2002, he pleaded for a stronger CFSP, with its budget coming directly from the EU budget. Also QMV should be extended in the CFSP, though a clear division of powers was needed in this field. Similar to Oleksy’s view on the ESDP, developing an effective CFSP would help to bring the EU closer to its citizens, according to Wittbrodt. Institutional reforms were not enough: ‘A couple of political steps forward are desperately needed.’76 With this in mind, Wittbrodt regretted at the end of the Convention in the plenary session that ‘[t]he decision making system in the CFSP remains under the unanimity procedure of voting’, because ‘it is a kind of failure for the efficiency of that policy. The creation of the position of the Union’s Minister for Foreign Affairs may mean nothing if he has no appropriate tool for carrying out his function’.77 Hübner shared similar views, if not more radical ones. Besides her proposal for a well-balanced joint border guard system in the area of JHA,78 she promoted

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the idea of a common diplomatic EU corps, which would lead to a more efficient CFSP by means of pooling the resources and work of national foreign policies. In the plenary session of 12 July 2002, she suggested ‘the creation of European Union representations, staffed by diplomats from EU institutions and Member States and reporting to the High Representative, replacing regular embassies where no strong national interest exists or ensuring their coordination where there is a multitude of national representations’.79 In the same intervention on CFSP, she stressed that ‘[t]he commission has to use its right of initiative [in this area] more actively than before’. Marta Fogler shared this opinion also for ESDP. During the plenary session of 20 December 2002, she stated: In my opinion, the responsibility for defence issues should lie with the Commission, but with a kind of intergovernmental control. . . . the decisionmaking rules in the ESDP area should be simplified and moved more towards the Community regime. Therefore, I am in favour of moving from unanimity to assent. When voting on military actions, the opt-out option should be applied.80 All the Polish delegates wanted more synergy between the High Representative and the Commissioner of Foreign Affairs. Oleksy urged the EU to strengthen the CFSP and to bring the High Representative and the Commissioner of Foreign Affairs closer to each other.81 Wittbrodt stated that ‘one voice and one face are necessary’, and also supported the unification of the position of High Representative and Commissioner of Foreign Affairs in one position, situated in the Commission.82 In the same debate, Wittbrodt expressed the wish for a bigger role for the EP in the CFSP. He was convinced that the EU needs to have military capacity, which is efficient ‘not only in Petersberg Tasks’. Next to a strong ESDP and CFSP, all Polish delegates emphasized the importance of a far-reaching, ‘more open-minded and constructive’ policy to the East, in which, according to Oleksy, Poland would function as a ‘bridge between the Union and its future eastern neighbours, sharing with them [our] experience and know-how from the transitional period’.83 Hübner held a radical view on how far this Eastern policy should go. In her contribution, ‘The European Union – open to citizens, open to the world’,84 she outlined the main purposes and tools of this policy. In her view, the EU should go beyond the existing instruments of cooperation and partnership. It was necessary to design an alternative form of European affiliation (perhaps a kind of confederation) for those countries, which answered to their aspirations and stimulated them to further internal social and economic transformations. The substantial elements of the formula she proposed were far-reaching: (1) a deepened political dialogue in the form of a Confederation Council with regular consultations in the area of economy, home affairs,

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energy, supported by summit meetings accompanying meetings of the European Council; (2) a gradual, asymmetrical liberalization of trade in close connection with reforms in key areas of economic life; (3) the EU’s involvement in the development of the energy and transport infrastructure in those countries; (4) regular consultations on the development of the Common European Security and Defence Policy; (5) ensuring controlled openness of borders, cooperation between border services; (6) close cooperation in the area of home affairs; and (7) support for the human dimension of regional cooperation: exchange of youth, access to educational programmes. Three months later she repeated her main points in the plenary session: ‘but let us go beyond the Partnership and Cooperation Agreements, let us talk free trade and cooperation to create a yet far larger area of internal security in Europe’.85 Whereas all Polish delegates wanted more effective common action in JHA, CFSP and ESDP, some of them nevertheless preferred the intergovernmental method in some fields. This was especially true for Hübner. She signed the collective proposal ‘on the issue of the division of competence’, which was against a rigid catalogue of powers, allowing for flexible adaptation to changing circumstances and preferences in the future.86 The signatories wanted the constitutional treaty to include ‘an explicit statement of the present situation that any matters where the EU has no competence remain the preserve of the member states’. They even suggested a possible renationalization of powers to the member states, in cases where action by the Union would not seem necessary any longer – though without defining these cases. This contribution was consistent with Hübner’s previous intervention in which she stated: ‘I certainly would exclude neither the addition of tasks to be undertaken at the level of the Union, nor the return of authority in some areas to the Member States.’87 On tax harmonization she pleaded for maintaining the intergovernmental approach, as this is ‘especially important in the case of the new Member States that have to create a favourable economic environment that supports the process of real convergence’.88 She added that social or employment policy issues should remain in the competence of the member states: ‘I believe differences in national social models should be respected throughout the Union. Nevertheless, all our social systems are based on common principles and I fully support the proposals concerning the basic social values of the European Union.’89 She pleaded for flexibility, the use of open coordination, and self-regulation in these areas.90 In order to face the problem of high unemployment and to improve the situation in the labour market, ‘a high level of flexibility’ is required, ‘to go beyond the Nice agreement would’, in her view, ‘make our own social policies more difficult today’.91 This did not necessarily mean less integration in the future. According to Hübner, ‘genuine subsidiarity also means that new areas of policy can see action at Union level’.92 The same opinion was expressed by Oleksy: ‘We currently have a variety of social models. Enlargement will further enrich this diversity. We should respect

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the need for adaptability of social systems if Member States are to maintain their competitiveness and high employment.’93 He opposed a rigid social Europe and stressed the need to keep this in the competence of the member states. He underlined the need of a continuing use of the principle of subsidiarity, which ‘should not be interpreted in such a way that it leads to the paralysis of the Union or to a step backwards in the process of European integration’,94 and the need for an as broad as possible definition of the goals and powers of the EU in order to make future changes possible. Hence he also opposed a clear, exhaustive list of powers. To summarize: on one hand, the behaviour of the Polish delegates conformed to expectations. They were all convinced Atlanticists, who wanted the continued presence of the USA in Europe. The exception to this was Fogler. On the other hand, their interventions went beyond the existing stereotypes. Instead of being sceptical towards a CFSP, ESDP and JHA, they wished more efficient action in these fields. In order to achieve this, they promoted here the community method. Sometimes their proposals were far-reaching (diplomatic Euro-corps, more initiative for the Commission, a joint border guard in JHA, and so forth). There was agreement among the Polish delegates on foreign affairs. All shared the same basic ideas and priorities. In this respect, it is surprising that they did not unite their voice in joint Polish contributions (for example on the future EU policy to the East), which probably would have had more effect. On the other hand, they all opposed ‘more Europe’ in sensitive areas such as social, economic and employment policy, at least for the time being. In the future these policies can become EU powers. Nevertheless, at the moment of the Convention, they were cautious and preferred to maintain the intergovernmental method. Finally, Trzcinski dedicated a paper on the benefits of a ‘constitutional treaty’ instead of a ‘constitution’. He wanted the final document to have the looks of a treaty and not of a constitution.95 The other Polish delegates always used the term ‘Constitutional treaty’. Hübner, in turn, while she favoured ‘referring to the principle of an ever closer Union’, expressed her ‘reservations about using the word ‘federal’ to denote administration of certain competencies of the Union’.96 The reason she gave for this were the many interpretations of the concept of federalism. So, whereas the Polish delegates often defended concepts which were typical of the community approach, as the analysis demonstrated, they firmly refused to accept literal references to it as ‘federal’ and ‘constitution’. By doing this they put themselves in the anti-federal camp in the Convention and confirmed expectations.

Conclusion The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the participation of the Polish delegates in the Convention demonstrated that the Polish view on the future of Europe was much more balanced than was generally assumed in Western

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Europe. The interventions of the Polish delegates did not always reflect expectations. Instead of being convinced anti-federalists, they defended in some policy areas a far-reaching community approach. First, they took the Convention seriously and actively participated in it by proposing amendments, writing contributions, and intervening in the plenary sessions. Whereas the other CEC representatives kept a low profile, especially at the beginning of the Convention, the Polish delegates did not. Contrary to expectations, Hübner was even more active than her counterparts of the EU-15. Second, there did not emerge a Polish group, united to defend the national interests. On the contrary, besides a few bilateral and trilateral contributions, the six delegates made only one joint contribution. Although they shared similar opinions on many issues, they did not speak with one voice, not even on the controversial issue of voting weights in the Council. Third, the examination of the content of the Polish contributions did not confirm the expectations of the Polish delegates being convinced antifederalists, as listed in Table 12.5. Neither were they convinced federalists. They combined a bit of both, although they tended to be more federalist than anti-federalist minded. Depending on the policy area, they were in favour of the community method. They insisted on a bigger role for the supranational institutions (EP and Commission) and the strengthening of the community method in policy areas such as CAP, regional policy, CFSP, JHA and ESDP. These areas are of large significance for Poland and therefore they often defended in these matters far more radically pro-European views than expected (enhanced cooperation, QMV, diplomatic Euro-corps, joint border guard). This does not mean, though, that they rejected the intergovernmental approach. For a limited number of areas such as social, economic and employment policy, it was their preferred method. Here flexibility was needed, at least for an indefinite period. By insisting on more power for the national parliaments, they expressed a similar preference for the intergovernmental method, albeit in an indirect way. It is important to underline here that the examples of Polish Eurosceptical interpellations are moderate in character. The proposals of the Polish delegates concerning taxation and social policy were neither radical nor more anti-federalist than those of the British Eurosceptics. On the contrary, they were fairly realistic, especially if seen from the Polish point of view. Moreover, the Polish delegates did not exclude these areas from becoming EU powers in the future. They were open to change. During the Convention debate, the Polish delegates demonstrated a tendency to shift positions. While acquiring experience and going through a process of learning, they abandoned some of their previous, rather Eurosceptical, positions and adapted them to more federalist insights. Reverse changes also were noticed. Concerning QMV, they first favoured the double majority proposed by the Convention. Towards the end, they withdrew these statements and defended the Nice system. In this way, they predicted the IGC fiasco of December 2003. The shifts in position were presumably caused by increasing

Poland and the EU Constitutional Convention 209 Table 12.5

Hypothesis 3: the Polish delegation was anti-federalist

Anti-federalist

Federalist

In favour of more power for the national parliaments

In favour of more power for the European Parliament In favour of both the intergovernmental method and the community method In favour of more power and more legitimacy for the European Commission

Concerning the definition of QMV (Qualified Majority Voting) in favour of the triple majority (at the end of the Convention)

Concerning the definition of QMV (Qualified Majority Voting) in favour of the double majority (in the beginning of the Convention) In favour of the extension of QMV and co-decision In favour of the principle of enhanced cooperation

Against the further development of a Common European Economic, Social and Employment Policy

In favour of further development of the CFSP (Common Foreign and Safety Policy), the ESDP (European Security and Defence Policy) and the policy of JHA (Justice and Home Affairs)

In favour of the use of the term ‘Constitutional Treaty’

pressure from the Polish domestic political scene, which became more polarized in the run-up to the accession referendum in June 2003. Explanations such as these need further examination. The results of the Polish participation in the Convention, which in essence reflected an elite vision in a very specific context (‘Convention spirit’, simultaneous with final accession negotiations), have to be put in a broader research perspective. The Polish domestic Euro-debate (among the public, in parliament, among political parties) analysed at the different stages of the integration process will probably lead to more sound explanations for the behaviour of the Polish delegates and will confirm or contradict it. Nevertheless, based on our analysis, we cautiously argue that the Polish view on the future of Europe was still under construction. It is a process that is susceptible to European and domestic

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influences. Neither was the Polish view on the future of Europe united. The popular saying ‘Tam gdzie dwóch Polaków, tam trzy zdania’ (Two Poles, three opinions) had not yet lost its relevance.

Notes 1 Björn Koopmans, ‘Kijk verder dan de uitbreiding (Look further than enlargement)’, De Standaard, 24 May 2004 and Jan Hunin, ‘De Poolse polonaise (The Polish Polonaise)’, De Standaard, 23 April 2004. 2 See for example David R. Cameron, ‘The Stalemate in the Constitutional IGC over the Definition of a Qualified Majority’, European Union Politics 5 (3) (2004), 373–91. 3 For a good interpretation of the Convention see Peter Norman, The Accidental Constitution. The Story of the European Convention (Brussels: EuroComment, 2003) and Jo Shaw et al., The Convention on the Future of Europe. Working towards an EU Constitution (London: The Federal Trust for Education and Research, 2003). 4 Initially the Convention was given a period of one year, but this was soon prolonged by another half-year. 5 See the official website of the Convention: http://european-Convention.eu.int/ 6 Ben Crum, ‘Politics and power in the European Convention’, Politics 24 (1) (2004), 3. 7 The Laeken Declaration, http://www.europa.eu.int/futurum/documents/offtext/ doc151201_en.htm or http://european-Convention .eu.int/pdf/LKNEN.pdf 8 ‘Introduction’, in Shaw, et al., The Convention, p. 14. 9 In reality the difference between bargaining and deliberation is not that sharp, but blurred. 10 ‘Introductory speech by President V. Giscard d’Estaing to the Convention on the Future of Europe’, http://european-Convention.eu.int/docs/speeches/1.pdf, p. 12. 11 Tony Brown, ‘Convention al Wisdom – What have we learned from the Convention Experience?’, The Federal Trust Online Paper 11/4 (2004), 3, http://www.fedtrust.co.uk/eu_constitution. 12 In autumn 2002 the Germans withdrew Peter Glotz and replaced him with Joschka Fischer. They followed hereby the example of Belgium, which sent its Minister of Foreign Affairs Louis Michel. By May 2003 all big countries (Germany, France, the UK and nine other countries) had replaced their initial delegates with a minister, whereas in the beginning only two big countries had delegated a cabinet member. 13 Klaus Bachmann, Konwent o przysz´lo´sci Europy. Demokracja deliberatywna jako metoda legitymizacji wl´adzy w wieloplaszczyznowym systemie politycznym (Wroclaw: ATUT, 2004), pp. 129–99. 14 Ibid., 131. 15 In the same conviction the UK (under Margaret Thatcher) had promoted enlargement to CEC in the early 1990s. An overview of the drivers and brakemen of enlargement among the EU-15 and their respective reasons to oppose or favour the process is given by Frank Schimmelfennig, ‘The Community Trap: Liberal Norms, Rhetorical Action, and the Eastern enlargement of the European Union’, International Organization 55 (1) (2001), 47–80. 16 Poland had three full representatives and three alternates in the Convention. These were selected both from the ruling centre left (Social Democrats – SLD) and from the centre-right opposition (Christian Democrats – Civil Platform or PO). The representative of the Polish Government was Minister of European Affairs, Danuta Hübner, who after the accession of Poland to the EU would become the

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17

18

19 20

21

22 23

24 25 26 27 28

29

30

EU Commissioner for regional policy. Her alternate was Professor Janusz Trzci´nski. The Polish Sejm delegated Józef Oleksy, the leading ‘EU-watcher’ of the SLD. As his alternate, Marta Fogler (PO) was appointed. Edmund Wittbrodt (also PO) represented the Polish senate. Genowefa Grabowska from the ruling SLD was appointed as his alternate. The analysis will concentrate on the three full members. Less attention will be paid to the few interpellations of their alternatives. The number of contributions of the EU-15 counterparts was found with the search function of the official Convention website after correcting for wrong attributions. http://european-Convention .eu.int/search.asp?lang⫽EN. Klaus Bachmann presented his results on the 5th Pan-European International Relations Conference in The Hague on 9–11 September 2004. Bachman’s paper, ‘Deliberating or Bargaining – the New Members and the Convention on the Future of Europe’, can be found on http://www.sgir.org/conference2004/papers/ Andreas Maurer, ‘Agenda Taking statt Agenda Setting. Die Neuen im Verfassungskonvent’, Osteuropa 5–6 (2004), 118–35. David Král analyses the participation of the governmental representatives of the Visegrád Four (Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland) and comes to the conclusion that Poland was the exception to the rule when it concerns active participation in the Convention. David Král, ’Profile of the Visegrád Countries in the Future of Europe Debate’, EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy Working Paper, September 2003. Klaus Bachmann includes all eight CECs, which entered the EU in 2004, while analysing both the government and the parliament representatives and comes to the same conclusion. Klaus Bachmann, ‘Deliberating or Bargaining – the New Members and the Convention on the Future of Europe’, paper presented at The Hague on 9–11 September 2004, http://www.sgir.org/conference2004/papers/ Fraser Cameron and Antoinette Primatarova, ‘Enlargement, CFSP and the Convention. The Role of the Accession States’, EPIN Working Paper No. 5 (2003), 4, http://www.ceps.be. Rafa´l Trzaskowski, ‘From candidate to member state: Poland and the future of the EU’, Institute for Security Studies Occasional Papers 37 (2002), 37. ‘Drawing inspiration from the cultural, Christian-Judaic and humanist inheritance of Europe, which, always present in its heritage, has embedded within the life of society its perception of the central role of the human person and his inviolable and inalienable rights, and of respect for law’: http://european-Convention. eu.int/Docs/Treaty/pdf/1000/Pre%20Wittbrodt-a%20EN.pdf CONV 607/03 CONTRIB 274 dated 11 March 2003. CONV 765/03 CONTRIB 342 dated 28 May 2003. CONV 830/03 CONTRIB 386 dated 10 July 2003. CONV 819/03 CONTRIB 372 dated 27 June 2003. No content analysis has been carried out on the amendments as the latter are basically the technical translation of the contributions and opinions expressed in the plenary sessions. In this way the content of the amendments would only confirm the one of the contributions and speeches. The content analysis is made more in detail in the following section (Hypothesis 3). Franziska Hagedorn, ‘The Community Method vs. the Intergovernmental Method in the European Constitution’, text of the seminar Internal Reform and the Constitution Building Capacities, organized under the CONVEU-30 project, Warsaw, April 2003, p. 2. An Schrijvers, ‘Polen als lid van de Europese Unie: Welke invloed op de toekomstige transatlantische relaties, de Navo en het Europese Veiligheids- en Defensiebeleid? (Poland as member of the EU: What kind of influence on the

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31

32 33 34 35

36 37 38

39

40

41

future transatlantic relations, Nato and the ESDP?)’, paper presented at ‘Politicologenetmaal’, Antwerp, 27–28 May 2004. This might partially explain why the Polish delegates did not make a joint contribution on this issue which would become the major point of contention at the IGC following the Convention. CONV 487/03 CONTRIB 190, 16 January 2003. Plenary session intervention, 20 January 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 15 May 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. For more details on the Polish domestic Euro-debate, see Aleks Szczerbiak, ‘After the Election, Nearing the Endgame: The Polish Euro-Debate in the Run up to the 2003 Accession Referendum’, Sussex European Institute (SEI) Working Paper No. 53 (2002). CONV 590/03 CONTRIB 263, 28 February 2003. Plenary session intervention, 20 January 2003, Polish government website on the Convention. The plenary session interventions of the Polish delegates were taken from three sources. The first is the Polish government website of the Convention (www.futurum.gov.pl), which at the moment of writing no longer exists. Fortunately, more or less the same speeches in English can be found with the search function of the official Convention website (european-Convention.eu.int/search.asp?lang⫽EN). This website also supplies a link to the ‘Verbatim Reports of Proceedings of the Convention’s plenary session’ on the website of the European Parliament (EP), which makes up a third source (www.europarl.eu.int/europe2004/index_nl.htm). There are minor and major differences between these three sources. Some speeches are mentioned on the Polish page, but are not found back in the Verbatim Reports of the EP, nor with the search function of the Convention website, and vice versa. Moreover, sometimes the content of the speeches between the sources is completely different. It is presumed in this case that the Polish source gives the speech, as it was prepared and intended, but that the Verbatim Reports of the EP registered precisely what was literally said in the plenary session. Danuta Hübner was considered a traitor of her country by some of the anti-EU opposition parties, as she did not defend the national interest well enough, in their opinion. Later on in the EU accession process, they handed over a motion of no confidence against her and tried to reject her candidature for the function of EU Commissioner. CONV 766/03 CONTRIB 343, 28 May 2003. ‘L’accord institutionnel de Nice n’est pas parfait et nous le savons, mais il présente le point d’équilibre entre les différents intérêts en jeu et, malgré les critiques faciles de quelques uns, nous considérons qu’il peut bien servir l’Union. Nous lançons donc un appel pressant à la Convention et notamment à son Présidium pour que les consensus déjà acquis en son sein ne soient pas mis en péril, . . .’ Working translation: ‘The institutional agreement of Nice is not perfect, as we know, but nevertheless it represents a balance between the different interests at stake. Notwithstanding the easy criticisms of some, we believe it can serve the Union well. That is why we appeal to the Convention and more specifically to its presidium that the consensus already achieved should not be put in danger.’ Plenary session intervention, 15 May 2003, Polish source. In the EP Verbatim reports, this is reported as ‘As to the institution proposals made at Nice, I believe we should not risk readdressing them. Nice introduced a well-balanced compromise on these issues. However, we should leave to the European Council the possibility of deciding unanimously on some of these issues in the future.’

Poland and the EU Constitutional Convention 213 42 Plenary session intervention, 9 July 2003, Polish government website on the Convention. In the version of the EP Verbatim Reports the end of the sentence ‘where, as you know, my government will strongly argue in favour of the retaining of the system agreed at Nice’, mentioned in the Polish source, is not reported. So she might not have said this, although she intended to. 43 Plenary session intervention, 13 June 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. 44 The definition of QMV is not a criterion as such of anti-federalism or federalism. Being in favour of the Nice weighting votes system or the double majority method proposed by the Convention does not say much in this respect. On the one hand, though, it could be argued that the double majority system is more communitylike, because deadlocks in the decision-making process are less probable with this system. As several studies have demonstrated, the double majority increases the effectiveness of the decision making in the EU-25 or EU-27. But, on the other hand, and viewed from a different perspective, this statement is contradicted, as the double majority gives relatively more power to the largest EU members by which the Union might become managed by a directorate of the biggest countries. 45 CONV 280/02 CONTRIB 99, 1 October 2002. 46 Plenary session intervention, 5 December 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. 47 See later in the chapter in the section on QMV. 48 Plenary session intervention, 7 June 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. 49 CONV 390/02 CONTRIB 135, 7 November 2002, ‘The role of national Parliaments’. 50 CONV 88/02 CONTRIB 46, 14 June 2002. 51 CONV 503/03 CONTRIB 205, 23 January 2003. 52 CONV 646/03 CONTRIB 288, 28 March 2003. 53 A good overview of the evolution of the Polish vision on the future of Europe is found in Rafa´l Trzaskowski, ‘From candidate to member state: Poland and the future of the EU’, Institute for Security Studies Occasional Papers No. 37 (2002). 54 Klaus Bachmann, ‘Konwent Europejski. O czym dyskutuje Konwent UE, a o czym · zrobi´c, aby go do tego zmusi´c?’ (‘The European Convention. powinien i co nalezy What does the Convention of the EU discuss, what should it discuss, and what has to be done, to force it to do so?’), Centrum Stosunków Miedzynarodowych ¸ (Center for International Relations), Raporty i analizy 1/03 (2003), 10–11. 55 Plenary session intervention, 21 March 2002, Official Convention website. 56 Plenary session intervention, 12 July 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. 57 CONV 646/03 CONTRIB 288, 28 March 2003. 58 Plenary session intervention, 15 May 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. 59 Plenary session intervention, 20 January 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. 60 Plenary session intervention, 15 May 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Plenary session intervention, 9 July 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. 64 CONV 782/03 CONTRIB 353, 3 June 2003. 65 Another reason for their support of the extension of QMV may lie in the fact that Poland received such a beneficial weighting of votes in Nice 2000. Poland got 27 votes, only two votes fewer than Germany and the other big three (France, Italy, the UK). This means that the country, with a medium demographic potential and a weak economic potential, was somewhat overweighted in Nice. This ‘overweight’ is only beneficial in decisions taken by QMV. When unanimity is required, Poland has the same power as any other state. This may have been another reason for their support, but definitely a second minor one. It seems unlikely that the Poles

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66

67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96

would have opposed the extension of QMV if they had received a less favourable number of votes in Nice, as the extension of QMV was one of the least controversial issues in the Convention debate. At the beginning of the Convention Oleksy outlined the previous Polish perception of enhanced cooperation. On 21 March 2002 he stated in the plenary debate that ‘As far as changes in the Union are concerned, we in Poland look through the prism of the ultimate cancellation of the effects of the post-Yalta division of Europe. Therefore we contemplate all proposals concerned with “closer cooperation”, a “hard core” or a “gravitation centre”, by asking ourselves the question of whether they develop a sense of community or create conditions for new divisions’ (Plenary session intervention, 21 March 2002, Convention website http://european-convention.eu.int/docs/speeches/69.pdf – the text here is lightly modified). For a detailed analysis of the Polish view on the future of Europe before the Convention see Trzaskowski, ‘From candidate to member state’. Plenary session intervention, 9 July 2003, Polish government website on the Convention. Plenary session intervention, 16 May 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 16 April 2002, Official Convention website. Plenary session intervention, 20 December 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 16 May 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. CONV 846/03 CONTRIB 383, 7 July 2003. Plenary session intervention, 9 July 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 5 June 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 30 May 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 20 December 2002, Polish government website on the Convention. Plenary session intervention, 9 July 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 6 June 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 12 July 2002, Official Convention website. Plenary session intervention, 20 July 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 11 July 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. Ibid. Ibid. CONV 20/02 CONTRIB 5, 3 April 2002. Plenary session intervention, 12 July 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. CONV 88/02 CONTRIB 46, 14 June 2002. Plenary session intervention, 15 April 2002, Official Convention website. Plenary session intervention, 7 November 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 6 February 2003, EP verbatim reports. Plenary session interventions, 24 May 2002, Official Convention website and November 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 6 February 2003, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 4 October 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 6 February 003, EP Verbatim Reports. Plenary session intervention, 15 April 2002, EP Verbatim Reports. Paper of 12 April 2002, Polish government website on the Convention. Plenary session intervention, 27–28 February 2003, Official Convention website.

13 The EU and Interculturality in Croatia after 2000 an Mojmir Kriz

Introduction Colloquially, the wars that led to the dissolution of Yugoslavia (between 1991 and 1995 in the western part of the country and 1999 in Serbia) are seen as the result of an upsurge of atavistic ethnic hatreds, which for decades slumbered below the fragile surface of the Yugoslav political and social order. However, more convincing is the argument that they had an entirely ‘European’ and even a modern and rational function of creating culturally and/or ethnically homogeneous nation-states instead of sustaining the traditional coexistence, communication, mixing and symbiosis of various groups with rather ambiguous and unstable ‘identities’. The function of these wars was to separate the communities by various kinds of ‘ethnic cleansing’, to draw territorial borders between them, and to solidify their particular ‘national identities’.1 This argument is all the more convincing as in Europe in general and in the European Union (EU) in particular, nationalism, although in rather domesticated forms, is still stronger than the feeling of belonging to a common European political formation and the conviction of possessing a citoyenneté européenne – European citizenship.2 In Croatia – just as in the other post-Yugoslav states – the upsurge of ethnic nationalism and war disasters had negative consequences on the culture and the mentality of the population when assessed from the perspective of the cultural, political, economic and demographic challenges that the country faces. The central idea of nationalists is that humanity consists of different culturally, and even biologically, rather homogeneous ‘ethnic groups’ or ‘nations’, that these groups possess the collective human right of self-determination, that the best or even the only meaningful way of achieving self-determination is the establishment of their own ‘national state’, and that it is the most important guarantor of freedom and of all individual rights and liberties. Correspondingly, in the thinking of the majority of the population, the ideological paradigm of ethnic nationalism dominates, based on terms such as ‘ethnic group’, ‘ethnic community’, ‘ethnic minority’, ‘nation’, 215

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‘national state’, ‘national community’, ‘national minority’, ‘autochthonous’, ‘mother country’, ‘country of the mother people’ (zemlja maticnog naroda), and similar terms.3 Most of the ‘ethnic communities’ and ‘national minorities’ in Croatia are understood as fragments of larger groups, ‘nations’ that possess their national state beyond Croatia’s borders.4 The character and status of different non-Croat groups living in Croatia can be differentiated into three categories: (i) non-Croats who have been living on the territory of Croatia for a long time and had already been recognized as ‘national minorities’ in Yugoslavia. Such groups, like the Czechs or Italians, are understood as ‘old-established’, ‘traditional’, or ‘native minorities’. They have little difficulty obtaining citizenship in independent Croatia; (ii) nonCroat members of the Yugoslav ‘nations and nationalities’,5 who migrated to Croatia in socialist Yugoslavia, whose ‘home republic’ was not Croatia, and who consequently were not ‘native’. These groups had to struggle for recognition as a ‘national minority’; and (iii) migrants who were foreigners both in Yugoslavia until 1991 and later in Croatia, or people who migrated to Croatia after independence. The present level of cultural plurality and the perspective of its considerable increase in the near future brought to the fore the necessity of both securing equal rights and liberties to members of all cultural groups and stimulating intercultural communication as a means of avoiding, solving, or moderating conflicts between them. Despite this, ethnic nationalism continues to dominate the political culture of the country, and liberal democracy remains unstable. This chapter examines this situation and the influence of the EU.

Political turnabout in 2000 Ethnic nationalism and hatred of Serbs6 was the dominant ideological and political orientation in Croatia until the end of 1999, when President Franjo Tud¯man died and his nationalist Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica – CDU) suffered an electoral defeat. The ‘national identity’ of the Croats was defined culturally: they are Roman Catholics who speak Croatian, a language which is – or is supposed to be – distinct from the Serbian and Bosnian languages,7 and who possess distinctly Central European traditions, stemming from their Austro-Hungarian heritage. Hostility towards Serbs as representatives of eastern Christian Orthodoxy and of Communist tyranny, and Muslim Bosnians as representatives of the millennial Ottoman threat to Christian Europe, was an additional important feature of Croatian national identity for many Croats. However, ethnic nationalism, especially if combined with a readiness for ethnic violence as an after-effect of ethnic wars, is certainly incompatible with the principles on which the EU is based: peace, respect for human rights and liberties, democracy, legality, and politics based primarily on negotiation. In other words, Croatia’s integration in the EU implies guaranteeing equal

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rights and liberties to all non-Croat groups of citizens, including some positive discrimination of them, and accepting the free circulation not only of commodities and capital, but also of people, in particular EU citizens. This necessarily increases the cultural diversity of the population. In addition, economic development in combination with demographic deficits requires considerable immigration of the labour force. Presumably, the largest percentage of future immigrants will be low-skilled workers and their families will come from the relatively poor countries with a demographic surplus such as Serbia (in particular Kosovo), Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey. Only a small percentage will come from developed Western countries. The latter will be welcomed because, as a rule, they possess a higher professional qualification and will bring with them considerable amounts of money. At any rate, both types of immigration have to be considered as highly advantageous for Croatia.8 Until the death of Tud¯man, Croatia did not manage to become a candidate for membership in the EU. In fact, Tud–man, an ethnic nationalist par excellence, was systematically shunned by EU politicians. Only after his death did this situation change due to the election of a new centre–left coalition of six parties led by the Social-Democratic Party (Socijal-Demokratska Partija – SDP), and a new government led by the social democrat Ivica Racan. In fact, the new government accomplished a political turnabout at the ideological and political level. It promised to lead Croatia into the EU, establish normal relations with neighbouring countries (former war adversaries Serbia and Montenegro in the first place), revise the for the most part criminal and unjust privatization of the economy, bring to justice both economic and war criminals, boost the economy, reduce the number of unemployed, and improve the situation of the poor. The new government also introduced a new minority policy. It is based on the recognition that ‘ethnic and multicultural diversity and the spirit of understanding, recognition, and toleration contribute to the advancement of the development of Republic of Croatia’9 and that ‘national minorities represent its wealth and by no means a problem.’10 Several laws passed in the 1990s, which discriminated against minorities, were replaced by modern liberal laws. The term ‘national minority’ was defined in the Constitutional Law on the Rights of National Minorities in the following way: ‘A national minority, according to the Constitutional Law, is a group of citizens of Croatia whose members traditionally dwell on the territory of the Republic of Croatia, possess ethnic, linguistic, cultural and/or religious traits different from those of other citizens, and are led by the desire to preserve these traits.’11 Unfortunately, the conceptual basis of the new legislation is rather deficient. The definition of ‘national minority’ seems to be in contradiction with the stipulation in paragraph 4(1) of the Constitutional Law that every citizen ‘is free to declare his or her belonging to a national minority’. A similar contradiction is found in the preamble of the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia of 4 December

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2000, where some national minorities are recognized as ‘autochthonous’, while the Constitutional Law does not distinguish ‘autochthonous’ from other minorities.12 While Croatia made considerable progress in meeting EU requirements, the economic development of the country was suboptimal; the results of the rapacious CDU privatization remained generally untouched, the situation of the poor and the unemployed hardly changed, and, as a result of bad economic policies, both the state and the not-so-poor citizens got into a consumption euphoria, which let the debts both of the state and of a large number of citizens grow to dangerous levels. Moreover, in view of the still virulent ethnic nationalism present in Croatia, the Racan government avoided all measures that could stir it up. It avoided contacts with the minorities, especially the Serbs, and only half-heartedly supported the return of Serbian refugees and collaborated with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. As a result, four years later, on 23 November 2003, the centre–left coalition surrounding the SDP lost the parliamentary elections and the CDU returned to power. The government headed by Ivo Sanader of the CDU needed no coalition partners. Fortunately, the Sanader government continued the foreign policy of rapprochement to the EU, and made use of its relative popularity and the pertinent EU requirements to eliminate from power positions and from the CDU criminals and the most extreme nationalists. As a result, on 18 June 2004, Croatia became an official candidate for EU accession and on 3 October 2005, the accession negotiations were officially opened. However, the Sanader government was unable to improve the economic situation of the country substantially and remained dependent on economic pressures from abroad, in the first place from the EU.

Constitutional, legal and institutional arrangements for national minorities It is because the Constitution of the Republic of Croatia of 1990 did not address satisfactorily the rights of non-Croats that the Constitutional Law on Human Rights and Liberties and on the Rights of Ethnic and National Communities or Minorities was passed in 1991/92 and amended in 2000.13 In 1997, Croatia ratified the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Basic Liberties, and thereby recognized the authority of the European Court for Human Rights in questions concerning the rights recognized in the Convention; between 1997 and 2003, it passed a number of legal acts defining the rights and liberties of the 22 officially recognized national minorities in Croatia. These legal acts guarantee the following rights and liberties for national minorities:14 (i) the right of every citizen of Croatia to declare freely his or her belonging to one or another national minority;15 (ii) the protection from any kind of negative discrimination based on the membership in a national

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minority,16 that is the protection of all minorities from all activities that might endanger their existence, rights and liberties; (iii) private, public and official use of minority languages and alphabets;17 (iv) education and schooling in the minority languages and alphabets, including preschool institutions such as kindergartens, primary and secondary schools, and other forms of education. Some measures of positive discrimination of minority children are also allowed;18 (v) the use and exhibition of minority signs and symbols; (vi) cultural autonomy to practise and develop particular minority cultures by having access to the members of their cultural and linguistic group abroad, as well as with corporate entities in that country involved in educational, scientific, cultural, publishing and humanitarian activities;19 and (vii) the protection of the way of life in accordance with the religious beliefs and cultural requirements of the minority. In order to facilitate religious life, the government of Croatia signed treaties on matters of common interest with the relevant religious communities, including the Islamic Community in Croatia.20 These legal acts also include: (viii) the access to public media with publications in the languages and alphabets of the national minorities: radio and television stations are obliged to promote the development of and understanding for the minorities in their programmes, and to let their associations and other institutions participate in the creation of some programmes addressing the minorities. On the other hand, the minority associations and institutions may establish their own media for public information in writing, speech and picture;21 (ix) the right of autonomous association and organization for promotion of minority interests: the Law on Civic Associations requires only three persons as founders of an association and the associations are to be funded by local and central governmental bodies of Croatia,22 which opens the possibility of positive discrimination of some groups;23 (x) representation in representative bodies on state and local levels, as well as in administrative and judicial bodies;24 and (xi) participation in public life and local administration by way of councils and individual representatives. In order to secure these rights and liberties for national minorities institutionally, a number of governmental and self-governing institutional arrangements were established: Boards of National Minorities (Vijec´a nacionalnih manjina) or alternatively single Representatives of a National Minority elected in units of local and regional self-government. These Boards and Representatives may establish Coordination Bodies of the Boards of National Minorities. The tasks of these bodies include the submission of proposals to the governmental bodies related to the interests of the minorities, nominating candidates for administrative functions, and being informed about all topics concerning minorities to be discussed in governmental bodies.25 In addition, the minorities are entitled to adequate representation in the bodies of local and regional self-government, the election of eight representatives in the Croatian parliament, and an adequate presence in administrative and judicial bodies.26

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On the governmental level, two bodies are important: first, the Council for National Minorities (Savjet nacionalnih manjina), which is an advisory body in the service of the government. Its functions include deliberating and making proposals related to the interests and problems of the minorities. In order to fulfil these functions, the Council is supposed to collaborate with local and regional Boards and Representatives of the minorities and government bodies, with the central government, with international organizations and institutions, and with the mother countries of the minorities. The 12 members of the Council are nominated by the Government of Croatia for a four years’ mandate. The nomination of seven of them is based on the proposals made by the Boards of National Minorities, while five members are selected among prominent cultural, scientific, professional and religious personalities proposed by various minority organizations, religious communities, corporate bodies, or individual members of the minorities. Second, the Bureau for National Minorities (Ured za nacionalne manjine) is an administrative body for the promotion of the rights and liberties of the minorities on the legal and institutional level, including the implementation of existing laws, collaboration with other bodies in charge of minority affairs, with the Council of Europe, and with other European institutions concerned with minority rights, keeping track of supranational documents related to minority rights, preparation of expert analyses concerning the implementation of those documents in Croatia, and the distribution of governmental funds to the various associations of the national minorities. Whereas the described constitutional, legal and institutional arrangements concerning the protection of the rights and liberties of minorities and the promotion of intercultural communication are satisfactory from a liberal democracy perspective and the requirements of the EU, their implementation faces a number of practical and legal obstacles. These obstacles result from the underdevelopment of the political culture of liberalism and tolerance, from dominant ethnic nationalism, and from the corresponding inter-group resentments.27 These resentments affect above all Serbs and Bosnian Muslims,28 with whom the Croats were at war between 1991 and 1995. The resentments against Bosnian Muslims are historically rooted in the struggle against the Ottoman Empire during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and in the belief of nationalistic Croats that Catholicism is a central element of their ‘national identity’ and that Croatia is a sort of Antemurale Christianitatis, an outpost defending Christianity against the Muslims. These resentments find expression in the difficulties Muslim communities experience in building mosques and cultural centres. The resentments against Serbs are of a more recent date. Serbs dominated Yugoslavia both culturally and politically before the Second World War. Ethnic hatred developed during that war, when the Croats systematically tried to exterminate the Serbs in their wartime Independent State of Croatia, a protectorate of the Axis powers. And finally, the recent war came about as a result of attempts by the Serbs to gain hegemony in Yugoslavia.

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Other obstacles are the result of the unwillingness of some local administrations and courts to act according to the law, of political pressures on the courts, of an insufficient number of judges, and also of the incompetence and the insufficient funding of local bureaucracies.29 The situation was made worse by the fact that Croatia ratified the European Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Basic Liberties (only in 1997), and thus recognized the authority of the European Court for Human Rights – most of the crimes against the minorities happened during the war of 1991–95. Negative discrimination, particularly of the Serbian minority, can still be seen in the areas of property rights, social rights (health and pension insurance), employment, rights to compensation for war damages, and so forth. In particular, Serbian refugees from 1995 meet with difficulties when they attempt to return to Croatia and to regain possession of their houses.30 Mention should also be made of more recent ethnically motivated incidents, including casual murders, aimed in particular at returning Serbian refugees.31 Finally, the citizenship laws present an important obstacle. Whereas ethnic Croats can easily obtain Croatian citizenship independently of their domicile before the independence of Croatia, members of other groups have to pass much more complicated procedures and satisfy more rigorous criteria.32

Sites and forms of intercultural communication In the institutional spectrum between state institutions and civil society, several types of institutions can be distinguished, of which intercultural communication is either the main objective or an unavoidable part of their activities. On the governmental level, the functions of the Bureau for National Minorities are dependent on the negotiations between the representatives of minority associations and the employees of the Bureau, which are in essence indirect negotiations between minority representatives. For its part, the Council for National Minorities, as an advisory body of the government, is even more dependent on direct intercultural communication between its members. Obviously, the implication of the legal prescription that the minorities are represented in the Croatian parliament by eight representatives and are adequately represented in the administrative and judicial bodies means that these bodies also become centres of intercultural communication, both officially and unofficially. Below the level of central government, the task of the abovementioned Coordination Bodies of the Boards of National Minorities is to harmonize the interests of different minorities, with intercultural dialogue as a necessary condition of their functioning. On the governmental level, several recent events demonstrate that Croatia’s politicians are anxious to convince other countries that theirs is a modern and tolerant country. In October 2004, in the frame of the Eighth Dialogue of the Orthodox Church and European peoples’ parties, Prime Minister Sanader declared that the aim of his government is to integrate all citizens of Croatia

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into Croatian society while preserving their identity, that for that purpose inter-religious dialogues are very important, and that Croatia, in its relations with its neighbours, is turning a new page of reconciliation and a common European future.33 Two months later, President Stjepan Mesic´ participated in a conference of the presidents of six countries of South-Eastern Europe (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro) with more than 100 other prominent participants, on interethnic and inter-religious dialogue, organized in Tirana by UNESCO. The presidents underscored that dialogue is the key for reconciliation and permanent peace, and promised that they would collaborate in order to avoid conflicts in the future like those of the 1990s.34 Such political acts addressing foreign countries not only improve Croatia’s image abroad, but their presentation in the media also influence public opinion at home by promoting intercultural toleration and communication. Below the governmental level, on 6 July 2005, a network of some 60 multiethnic South-Eastern European cities was founded in Zagreb. The network is a non-governmental organization supported by 140 single non-governmental organizations. Their common objective is the promotion of local democracy, human rights and liberties, intercultural communication, and bordercrossing collaboration among the founding cities. The network enjoys broad political support: the founding documents were signed by city mayors and representatives of local governments from all the post-Yugoslav countries, Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary and Romania. President Mesic´, as the representative of Croatia, as well as representatives of the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Collaboration in Europe, and others promised to support the project.35 Geographically, probably the most active and dynamic city in intercultural communication in Croatia is Rijeka (former Fiume), where 17 minority associations are active. In the frame of its financial resources, the City of Rijeka promotes educational, information, publishing and other cultural activities.36 On 4 April 2004, the heads of nine councils of National Minorities of the City of Rijeka, representing the Roma, Slovenes, Serbs, Montenegrins, Hungarians, Albanians, Macedonians, Bosnians and Italians, signed an agreement on the establishment of the Coordination Body of the Councils of National Minorities. The agreement is a confirmation and a further step in the direction of toleration, multiculturalism and the cosmopolitan openness of Rijeka. The Coordination Body developed a Minority Forum in the form of a series of events – roundtables, panels and lectures – in which various aspects of life, and the status and the problems of minorities are discussed. In the City Council, two of its members represent the minorities. One of the permanent committees of the City Council is the Committee for Ethnic and National Communities and Minorities, responsible for the prosperity of the minorities.37 After the collapse of Communism, neither the schools nor the mass media gave up their acquired behavioural patterns of subjection to political power

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and ideological narrowness and intolerance. For the most part, Communist ideology was replaced by the nationalism and nationalistic projects of Tud¯man.38 This situation began to change after his death and the electoral victory of the centre–left coalition in 2000. The new political orientation generated a decrease in nationalist propaganda in school textbooks, and ensured that the educational needs of minority children were officially recognized and satisfied. A similar development took place at the academic level. The media also gradually assumed a more civic role of critically informing the citizenry of important events, projects, different cultural communities in Croatia, and the principles of the common constitutional order. Their independence has been only gradually implemented under strong pressures from abroad, primarily from the EU. Thus, in 2004, the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Rijeka established a new Department of Cultural Studies and the corresponding interdisciplinary course of studies named ‘Intercultural Communication’, leading to the academic degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts. Besides the course on intercultural communication, the programme of cultural studies in Rijeka also promises theoretical and practical study of various fields of culture, discourse studies, and so forth. Unfortunately, subjects such as ‘political culture’, ‘multiculturalism’, ‘intercultural’ and ‘interreligious dialogues’ seem to be somewhat underrepresented.39 By the same token, Croatian Television (Hrvatska Televizija – HTV) regularly transmits the programmes Ecumene (Ekumena) and Spiritual Challenge (Duhovni izazov), organized by the religious communities. The programmes consist of discussions among religious leaders, professionals and the public on questions of religious and social relationships. Their purpose is to raise the level of public tolerance for religious life and religious communities. These spheres of public opinion in Croatia were until recently practically non-existent as a result of the Communist suppression of religion and the general underdevelopment of civil society.40 There are also secondary school projects promoting intercultural communication, for instance the project ‘Interculturality – a way of living together’ in the First Croatian Gymnasium of Sušak41 (Prva sušacka hrvatska gimnazija), launched in the autumn of 2003.42 Still, the treatment of minorities remains unsatisfactory. In the media, they are dealt with quite rarely, often in the context of some extreme situation. By the same token, their access to mass media, particularly television, in the form of special programmes in their languages and developed by their members, are essentially non-existent. In this regard Croatia is far behind other SouthEast European countries. For instance, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, and Serbia and Montenegro feature numerous specialized TV stations broadcasting programmes for the Roma in Romany.43 Religious communities and organizations can be considered a special category of civil society associations that secure the cultural reproduction of society and that mediate between the citizenry and its political representatives. The

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most important is the Roman Catholic Church as the largest religious organization that includes almost 88 per cent of the Croatian population, and because it is explicitly dedicated to intercultural communication. Thanks to the Second Vatican Council (1962–65), the Catholic Church is the only religious organization that developed a comprehensive and systematic political concept of common life with the adherents of other religions, as well as with agnostics and atheists. Pope John XXIII characterized the Roman Catholic Church as a Church of dialogue and openness towards the world, and Pope Paul VI spoke of a dialogue of redemption. Pope John Paul II was also highly active. He was the first to visit a synagogue and a mosque, to recognize diplomatically and visit Israel, to pray at the Kotel haMaaravi (Western wall) in Jerusalem, to affirm the validity of the covenant between God and the Jewish people, and to publish several documents related to these subjects. The Roman Catholic Church in Croatia is active both ecumenically in communication with other Christian communities, and in communication with non-Christian religious communities.44 Unfortunately, a large percentage of lower and local clergy are still primarily Croatian nationalists. Direct contacts and dialogue between religious communities, civic associations and politicians are organized at the central level and in some cities, in the first place in Zagreb, by state and city governments and other bodies. In Zagreb, there are regular bimonthly meetings of the leaders of religious communities, where they analyse events and situations, discuss their future work, and make proposals to politicians. Similar activities exist on lower levels. Beyond that there are unmediated irregular ‘horizontal’ contacts between various communities and associations in the form of multicultural and multi-religious events such as art exhibitions, lectures, celebrations of religious holidays, mutual visits, and so forth. Such events are organized several times a year and their objective is to meet and become acquainted personally with participants with different cultural and religious backgrounds.45 As already suggested, the City of Rijeka is a model of openness for intercultural communication. In 1996, the Catholic archbishopric of Rijeka founded under the leadership of Dinko Popovic´, a priest in a local parish, a Commission for Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue (Povjerenstvo za ekumenizam i med¯ureligijski dijalog) whose counterpart in the municipality is the Ecumenical Committee of the City of Rijeka (Ekumenski odbor grada Rijeke). Together they sponsored various liturgical and educational interreligious events, including meetings with religious groups from abroad, lectures and discussions in schools, common excursions, and other activities. On 22 July 2004, these two bodies organized the 9th International Ecumenical and Interreligious Gathering. Among the guests were 40 Catholic and Protestant participants from Linz, Austria. The group first visited several Catholic and Orthodox churches in Rijeka. In the afternoon, the members of the ecumenical communities of Rijeka and Linz met in and around the church in Rukavac, a small village in the proximity of Opatija,

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where a common prayer and an interreligious roundtable were held. An imam of the Muslim community in Rijeka also participated.46 On 28 October 2004, the Commission for Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue, the Ecumenical Committee of the City of Rijeka and the Group ‘Pax’ at the School of Economy (Ekonomska škola) organized an ecumenical/interreligious roundtable discussion on the theme ‘Holiness in school, education and training: tolerance, dialogue, love and goodness’, one year after the first dialogue on this theme. The representatives of the Catholic and Baptist churches and of the Jewish community in Rijeka spoke on the concept of holiness in the sense of tolerance, dialogue, love and goodness. The participants published a declaration inviting everybody to foster holiness in everyday life and in the relations with other people.47 Mutual visits of religious communities, in most cases of their leaders, have a predominantly symbolic function. On 13 July 2004, Josip Cardinal Bozanic´, the archbishop of Zagreb, visited the Islamic centre and the mosque in Zagreb for the first time, where he met mufti Ševko Omerbašic´, the president of the Direction (Mešihat) of the Islamic Community in Croatia. The two talked about common problems, such as the education of religious leaders and religious education in schools. They declared that the relationship between the Islamic community and the Catholic Church in Croatia is good.48 Similarly, the rabbi of the Jewish community in Zagreb, Kotel Da-Don, paid a visit to the Islamic centre. Secular civic associations (non-governmental organizations), projects and activities play an important role in the development of civic culture and civil society, and the strengthening of intercultural toleration. At times the engagement is direct, by promoting communication and discussions between cultural groups and thus reducing tensions and misunderstandings between them. But very often it is indirect, by offering relief to the poor and to victims of war or intergroup violence, by supporting elections, monitoring human rights, fighting abuse and oppression of women, and organizing peace workshops. The advantage of these associations over political and religious organizations is that they are less dependent on the majority opinion, which allows them to pursue objectives lacking majority support. This advantage is also enjoyed by foreign organizations whose spectrum of activities covers the support of grass-roots humanitarian activities, the development and funding of scientific projects, the financing of lectures, conferences and seminars, along with a direct influence on political parties. Very important in this area are foreign foundations, such as the foundations of political parties from EU countries or the Open Society Foundation. In the years 1998–2003 the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation organized and funded the project ‘Dialogue of the Historians’ (Dijalog povjesnicara/istoricara),49 in which historians from Germany, Yugoslavia (since 2002 Serbia and Montenegro) and Croatia participated. Eight scientific

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conferences produced eight sets of presentations. Topics of the discussions were the conflicts in South-Eastern Europe, stereotypes of the respective ‘other’, methodological problems of historiography in an unfavourable environment dominated by political tensions, nationalism and ethnic wars, the dissolution of socialist Yugoslavia, the national identities of Croats and Serbs,50 their social position as minorities outside their ‘mother countries’, and the political role of the churches. Hans-Georg Fleck, director of the Foundation’s bureau for South-Eastern Europe and spiritus rector of the project, wrote that the intention of the project was to initiate a scientific dialogue among historians in the hope that it would influence their environments, that is gradually change the prevailing mentalities, historical myths and political identities, legitimize cultural plurality, and promote intercultural dialogues in different spheres. In particular, the project was aimed at undermining the archaic understanding of historical science as builder of national identities of cultural groups by developing their national myths that give meaning to their existence as ‘nations’.51 Another example of this kind of activity is the association Virtual Free State of Rijeka, registered in December 2004. The ‘virtual’ in its name indicates that the association does not want to separate the city and region of Rijeka from the rest of Croatia, but strives for better integration of and more autonomy for the region, and that it intends to base many of its activities on internet communication. According to the statute of the association, its purpose is to cultivate the cultural, social, historical and sport traditions of Rijeka. This will necessarily bring to light the cosmopolitanism of the city resulting from its being a port and its rather agitated history including strong Austrian, Hungarian, Italian, Slavic and other influences.52 To conclude this section on places and forms of intercultural communication in Croatia, it is important to note that intercultural dialogues can have very diverse objectives, such as solving conflicts in which cultural differences play a major role, mutual information about the principal features of (one’s own) culture(s), discussions of doctrinal differences in order to reach a consensus about the most convincing doctrinal claims and, in the last analysis, about the most convincing way of finding a constitutional order that secures a peaceful relationship between different cultural groups, based on a consensus about the just distribution of available resources among different cultural groups, and so forth. But due to the fact that the last Yugoslav ethnic war is recent and the war in Croatia happened ten years ago, intercultural communication is still in its beginnings. While intercultural contacts occur in various forms – conferences, roundtables, seminars, common prayers and common excursions – their contents and objectives are quite limited. These limitations are the result of a kind of consensus that the discussion of subjects that may result in conflicts, such as central doctrinal and political questions, should be avoided. As a result, intercultural contacts often have the character of common rituals, such as

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common meals, prayers, singing and excursions. But there are also encounters where participants of different cultural (religious, ethnic) backgrounds present and explain to the others the central teachings of their doctrines, the particularities of their everyday life, the highlights of their arts and folklore, and so forth. Such presentations often include assertions that one’s own culture or cultural group is peace-loving and non-aggressive, and that the violence initiated or supported by adherents of that culture is only an anomaly, the result of misunderstandings, or the necessary reaction to the actions of an adversary. Deeper and more controversial discussions are rare or non-existent. Discussing incompatibilities between comprehensive doctrines, for instance religions, is not desirable because it may result in ideological conflicts. Similarly, discussions of the political roles of communities based on such doctrines, and of the political system that should guarantee their peaceful common life and optimal collaboration are not desirable either, primarily because the Catholic majority believes that its Catholic privileges are justified. On the other hand, the minorities are content because of the constitutional guarantees of their minority rights.53 Thus the aims of the intercultural contacts and dialogues in most cases do not exceed listening to the other side, getting acquainted, learning to accept particularities, that is to say cultural differences, finding a ‘common language’, developing a culture of toleration necessary for the continuation of the dialogue, and, finally, achieving peaceful coexistence and reconciliation as far as possible.

Countervailing tendencies Unfortunately, ethnic nationalism and intolerance based on 200 years of European nationalist traditions and resuscitated by recent nationalist movements and wars cannot be overcome in the span of a few years. Nevertheless, the situation is improving; among other things this is due to the fact that the new CDU government continues the moderate and EU-friendly politics of its predecessor. But ethnic nationalism is still rather virulent as a result of the following: (i) the fact that CDU was a strongly ethnic–nationalist party during the authoritarian rule of its founder and leader, Franjo Tud¯man, nourished the hopes of many Croatian nationalists that after its electoral victory in 2004 their often violent demonstrations of ethnic superiority would again become acceptable; (ii) three important organized social forces still support Croatian ethnic nationalism: several rightist parties, a large fraction of the Catholic clergy, and organizations of the veterans of the war of 1991–95; (iii) the mass media are still not free of incorrect and biased reporting, selective reporting of unusual events and situations involving minorities, and rather sophisticated and concealed forms of hate speech, especially against the Serbs and the Roma. On the other hand, since 2000, the brutal and systematic hate speeches against the minorities in the mass media, the most important creator and shaper of the public opinion, have by and large disappeared.

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Nevertheless, minority topics are often neglected and thereby minorities are marginalized in the public consciousness. To make things worse, Croatian criminal law – in contradiction to the Constitution – does not define hate speech as a criminal offence, and the courts are unwilling to prosecute it even when the legal instruments are sufficient; (iv) the relatively new phenomenon of internet sites extolling Nazism and fascism, including the Croatian fascist movement of Ustaša, and covering a whole spectrum of hate speech. If servers with such websites are not located in Croatia but somewhere abroad, legal prosecution of the responsible becomes hardly possible;54 and (v) the degree of Croatian ethnic particularism that is highly dependent on the politics of EU towards Croatia. Thus in 2004 and the first months of 2005 the Croats hoped that the EU would schedule the accession negotiations to begin some time in the spring of 2005. This did not happen because Croatia did not deliver the indicted general Ante Gotovina to the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia in The Hague. Many Croats revere Gotovina as a national hero for his activities during the war of 1991–95, and this indictment and the postponement of the negotiations resulted in growth of ethnic particularism. However, since the beginning of the accession negotiations with the EU in October 2005 this tendency has been reversed. As a result, the situation of the most important non-Croatian groups is very uneven: the worst is the situation of the Serbs, the main adversaries in the war between 1991 and 1995. They are the biggest national minority in Croatia55 and are still considered to be a grave danger for the state. As a consequence, ten years after the end of the war, crimes against the Serbs still occurred. For instance in Karin, a village in a region in Dalmatia, which was occupied by the Serbs and in which there was heavy fighting during the war, Dušan Vidic´, an 84-year-old man, had his throat slit in a kind of ritual murder in May 2005. In Eastern Slavonia, which was similarly a victim of the war, terrorist attacks occur from time to time and Croats and Serbs are living in a kind of apartheid. In Knin, the former capital of the territories occupied by the Serbs between 1991 and 1995, after local elections in which a Serbian party (Samostalna demokratska srpska stranka – SDSS) won a relative majority, the CDU refused to enter into coalition with it, formed a coalition of several small Croatian parties, and thus prevented the SDSS from exercising political power.56 Serbs expelled from Croatia in 1995 often face huge bureaucratic hurdles upon returning, as well as private hostility, malice and criminal activities against them, especially when they try to take possession of their property or to find a job.57 An extreme case of hate speech against the Serbs was the speech by Gordana Dumbovic´, former mayor of Petrinja (35,000 inhabitants), teacher in the primary school in Kostajnica (15,000 inhabitants), and member of a rightist political party, in which she said: Our people are martyrs, our people are believers, they are on their patrimony. That minority guy (manjinac), the miserable Serb who came back from his

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mother Serbia, is neither a human, nor an animal. Animals do not deserve such a comparison with them. No such minority guy, a Serbian Gipsy, will be left in peace in Petrinja, nor anywhere else, where if only one mother or child were slayed or killed and Croats slaughtered.58 The situation of Muslims, of whom some 35–40 per cent define themselves as Bosnians, is different. While physical attacks on them are very rare, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in New York in September 2001, Muslim institutions in Zagreb were the object of a number of telephone threats. Another good illustration of their situation is the project of the Islamic community of Rijeka to build an Islamic centre with a mosque. Since 1998, the project has caused ongoing tensions over its location, size and architecture. The Islamic community planned to build the centre in a residential suburb, but the inhabitants resisted construction. They referred to the disorder in urban planning, to the informal rule that religious and communal buildings be located in the city centres, not suburbs, to architecture, and to democratic rights. They rejected the project by denouncing it as an ‘aggression against the democratic rights of the citizens’, but said that they were ready to accept the centre if it did not stand out architecturally from its environment, that is to say if it did not feature the traditional Ottoman mosque architecture, generally characteristic of the mosques in the Balkans.59 Finally, physical and verbal attacks on Jews – of whom only a few hundred live in Croatia – are extremely rare. Croatia gradually learned the lesson from ‘Europe’ that, after the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis, harassing Jews is both legally and morally one of the worst transgressions. Nevertheless, there is a policeman permanently stationed at the entrance to the Jewish community in Zagreb.60 These phenomena that endanger the peace between the cultural groups are the reason why in many intercultural and interreligious events the participants insist that their activities and objectives should not be political. They maintain, for instance, that ‘politics has nothing in common with religion’,61 yet the exercise of direct and indirect political influence by large religious communities is obviously of the greatest importance.

Conclusion The political function of the ethnic–nationalist wars in the Balkans in the 1990s was the constitution of ‘national states’ based on the cultural and/or ethnic homogeneity of their populations instead of cultural plurality and the ambiguous and unstable cultural orientations that characterized the citizens of former Yugoslavia. This is an argument against the popular thesis that ethnic conflicts on the Balkans are a kind of permanent but sometimes only latent phenomena. Correspondingly, the political culture of Croatia’s population, including its politicians, scientists and other intellectuals, that dominates in the media

230 The Challenges of EU Membership

and in legal and other official texts, is based on the paradigm of ethnic nationalism, on concepts such as ‘ethnic group’, ‘ethnic community’, ‘ethnic minority’, ‘nation’, ‘national state’, ‘national community’, ‘national minority’, ‘autochthonous’, ‘mother country’, ‘country of the mother people’, and the like. This paradigm implies that all ‘peoples’ (ethnic, cultural groups) have the right to live in their own independent ‘nation-states’, that persons who live outside their ‘nation-states’ belong to ‘national minorities’, and that ‘national minorities’ are the primary or even the only objects of toleration, interest for intercultural communication, and so forth. At the same time, Croatia strives for recognition as a European country, the Croats feel that they are somehow entitled to become citizens of the EU – in clear contradistinction to the ‘Balkans’, geographically to the east of Croatia, where Orthodox Christianity, the Serbs, the Bosnian Muslims and other groups live. However, aggressive ethnic nationalism and the destabilizing after-effects of war and violence are certainly incompatible with the principles on which the EU is based. Due to this incompatibility, during the rule of Franjo Tud¯man, Croatia made little progress towards membership in the EU. Only the new centre–left coalition government, constituted around the Social-Democratic Party and inaugurated at the beginning of 2000, reoriented Croatia’s politics and declared membership in the EU to be one of its most important political objectives. It passed laws and implemented institutions, which secured to cultural groups – called ‘national minorities’ or ‘national communities’ – broad individual and group rights and liberties, political representation, and in some cases even positive discrimination. The new government of Ivo Sanader of the CDU, inaugurated in 2004, decided to continue the policies of its predecessor, that is to say that the principal objective of its foreign politics remained the membership of the country in the EU. On 18 June 2004, Croatia became an official candidate for EU accession and on 3 October 2005 accession negotiations began. Despite these relatively successful official policies, there are still numerous obstacles on Croatia’s way towards becoming a tolerant and stable liberal-democratic country. Such obstacles are the political culture of the population characterized by a traditional lack of tolerance and liberalism, ethnic nationalism stirred up during the rule of Tud¯man, resentment especially against the Serbs and Bosnian Muslims as a consequence of the recent war, and the still valid citizenship law inspired by ethnic nationalism. On the governmental level, some of the new institutions securing the rights, liberties and the representation of the national minorities are simultaneously sites of intercultural dialogues. Such institutions are the Coordination Bodies of the Boards of National Minorities and the Council for National Minorities. Similarly, local, regional and central bodies of representation, which include Representatives of National Minorities, play an important role. Below the governmental level, the religious communities are very active.

The EU and Interculturality in Croatia 231

Due to its size – almost 88 per cent of Croatia’s population is Catholic – the most important religious community and organization is the Catholic Church. Although a considerable percentage of Catholic clerics are Croatian ethnic nationalists, there are also many who take seriously the conclusions of the Second Vatican Council and the teachings and activities of Pope John Paul II. Religious communities often collaborate with governmental bodies in the preparations of interreligious and intercultural events. Less powerful and less stable, but perhaps no less influential, are secular civic associations, because they cover a broader spectrum of intercultural activities. This spectrum extends from scientific projects to the promotion of the rights of lesbians and homosexuals, and even mysticism. Foreign foundations have been playing an important role in this area. There are considerable differences in the openness for intercultural communication in Croatia’s population. They are dependent on differences in education, cultural differences between the city and the countryside, different experiences during the war between 1991 and 1995 (occupation by the Serbs, battles, war destructions, ‘ethnic cleansings’), and also on historical experiences in their contacts with neighbours. Generally, cultural openness and toleration increase from east to west of the country and from the countryside to large cities. The development of political culture in Croatia is characterized by a gradual growth of understanding about liberal democracy and the readiness to accept the fact that ‘national minorities’ must be able to enjoy the same rights and liberties as the ethnic Croats. This development is the result primarily of the influences of politicians and mass media upon the population. However, ethnic nationalism in the political culture of the majority, in legal acts and in political institutions, still endangers the stability of the country. It could be destabilized, for example if a cultural and/or territorial group decides that it is a ‘people’ in need of a ‘national state’, or if the majority population comes to the conclusion that a certain ‘national minority’ is loyal primarily to its ‘mother nation’ abroad instead to the state it lives in, or if the numerical relationships and the geographic distribution of various ‘national minorities’ change and these possibly decide that a correction of borders or of their status is necessary. Two lines of development could bring Croatia out of this fragile situation. The first is the development of a stable, radically liberal political culture, accompanied by corresponding legislation, in which ‘national identity’, that is the belonging to one or another cultural group (‘people’, ‘nation’, ‘ethnic community’, ‘national minority’) has become at least as much a private matter as is at present religion in secular states. The second line is a cultural development back towards the ambiguous, heterogeneous, syncretic, unstable, and also opportunistic cultural orientations, similar to those preceding the dissolution of Yugoslavia. At present, the political culture in Croatia is gradually developing along both of these lines, a broadly held conviction

232 The Challenges of EU Membership

being that ethnic nationalism can be easily combined with liberal democracy, whereas the ideas that cultural orientations are complex, syncretic, unstable and even contradictory are generally still out of sight of the majority. It is the vested interest of the EU, the political actor with the strongest influence on the Balkans, to stimulate the development of political culture in Croatia along both of these lines, especially by promoting intercultural communication wherever possible. Unfortunately, the EU has accepted the ethnic division of Yugoslavia because most European states are not themselves free of ethnic nationalisms. Thus the EU has two presumably effective instruments for the reduction of ethnic nationalism in Croatia. The first is the reduction of ethnic nationalisms in the EU countries themselves. The failure of the first attempt to adopt democratically a European constitution could be used as an occasion to accelerate the development of the EU towards a liberal political community in which the influence of ‘national states’ is reduced in favour of political liberalism, democracy and deliberative communication at all levels of society. The second is the continuation of the process of bringing Croatia closer to the EU despite the disturbances caused by the failure of the EU constitution, a process consisting of stimulating the development of Croatia’s political culture and political system that emphasizes liberal democracy, tolerance and cultural openness, as well as legality and economic prosperity.

Notes 1 See Ger Duijzings, ‘Ethnic Unmixing under the Aegis of the West: a Transnational Approach to the Breakup of Yugoslavia’, Bulletin of the Royal Institute for Inter-Faith Studies 5 (2) (2003), http://www.riifs.org/journal/essy_v5no2_Duijzings.htm. 2 See Ute Frevert, ‘Was ist das bloß – ein Europäer?’, Die Zeit, 23 June 2005, p. 12. 3 These terms have no passably clear definitions and are used most often for demagogic reasons. For instance, in an introductory textbook in sociology the term ‘ethnic group’ is defined in the following words: ‘An ethnic group is a set of individuals who see themselves or are seen by others as belonging to a certain social category because of their common ancestry. Ancestry includes race, national origin, and religion’ (Bernard Philips, Sociology. From Concepts to Practice (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), p. 175). A quite different definition from the same period of time and probably with no lesser scientific ambitions is the following: An ethnic group is ‘an alternative term for “race” proposed by the English anthropologist Ashley Montagu, approximately equivalent to a local race. An ethnic group may also be defined as a group of persons sharing a common cultural heritage.’ See Encyclopaedia Britannica, Micropaedia, vol. 3 (Chicago, 1980), p. 980. The semantic problems with the other quoted terms are similar. For instance, Siniša Tatalovic´, a Croatian expert on questions concerning ‘national minorities’, professor at the Faculty of Political Sciences in Zagreb, and since 2005 counsellor of Croatia’s president Stjepan Mesic´, failed when he tried to define the term ‘minority’. See Siniša Tatalovic´, ‘Prilog razumijevanju pojma manjina’, Bošnjac ka pismohrana 1 (1–4) (1999), 451–61. Since it is not possible to avoid these terms in this text, for want of a better solution I use the expression ‘ethnic nationalism’ in the sense of a

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4

5 6

7

8 9 10

11 12 13

14

15

16

group possessing some – however marginal or fictitious – common cultural – ‘ethnic’ – traits, having a strong feeling of solidarity based on the conviction that there are such common traits and that they are very important, and believing that due to that ‘identity’ it should live in and/or fight for an own, sovereign, ‘national state’. Concerning the status and the identity of Bosnian Muslims in Croatia see Edis Felic ´, ‘Šemso Tankovic´, prvi bošnjac ki zastupnik u Saboru RH’ (interview), Bošnjac ka pismohrana 4 (13–16) (2003), 31–6; Sena Kulenovic´, ‘Ugovorom s Vladom RH priznata je autohtonost muslimana’ (interview with mufti Ševko Omerbašic´), ibid., pp. 63–71. The standard Serbo-Croatian name for the various cultural groups in socialist Yugoslavia was ‘narodi i narodnosti’. After the expulsion of some 60 per cent of the Serbian population from Croatia in August 1995, at the end of the war of 1991–95, the Croatian government introduced a number of legal and other measures whose purpose was to prevent the Serbs from returning to Croatia and taking possession of their property. See Tena Erceg, ‘Polozaj nacionalnih manjina u Republici Hrvatskoj – zakonodavstvo i praksa’, Centar za ljudska prava (2005), 3–7, www.human-rights.hr/dokumenti/polozajnm.htm. During the existence of Yugoslavia, these languages did not exist separately. Beside the Slovenian, Macedonian and Albanian language, each spoken by about two million people, the dominant language in Yugoslavia was Serbo-Croatian, its official name being ‘Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Serbian, or Serbian, or Croatian language’.  icin-Šain, ‘Prilagodba Hrvatske vec´oj prisutnosti stranaca’, Mirotvorni See Ante C izazov XII (31–32) (2004), 18–22. ‘Ustavni zakon o pravima nacionalnih manjina’, Narodne novine, No. 155/2002, § 3 (2). Government of the Republic of Croatia, Report of the Republic of Croatia on the Implementation of the Framework Convention on Protection of National Minorities, March 2004. See ‘Ustavni zakon o pravima nacionalnih manjina’, § 5. See Siniša Tatalovic´, Nacionalne manjine u Hrvatskoj (Split: Stina, 2005), pp. 22–31; Davor Gjenero, ‘Evaluacija otvorenosti društva: manjine’ (manuscript). ‘Ustavni zakon o ljudskim pravima i slobodama i pravima etnickih i nacionalnih zajednica ili manjina u Republici Hrvatskoj’, Narodne novine, No. 27/1992, No. 34/1992, No. 51/2000. See on the following points in particular: ‘Ustavni zakon o pravima nacionalnih manjina’, especially § 7 and Tatalovic´, Nacionalne manjine u Hrvatskoj, pp. 22–89 passim. See ‘Ustavni zakon o pravima nacionalnih manjina’, § 4 (1). Already between the population censuses of 1991 and 2001 a considerable number of citizens changed their declaration of ‘national identity’ (see Government of the Republic of Croatia, Report of the Republic of Croatia on the Implementation of the Framework Convention on Protection of National Minorities, March 2004, p. 46). A rather odd implication of this stipulation is that if a sufficiently large number of people decide to declare themselves as belonging to, for instance, one or another Micronesian cultures, or even to an ad hoc invented culture, and organize themselves in a corresponding association, the state would have no leverage to refuse to treat them as any other ‘national minority’, i.e. to finance corresponding schooling of their children, to secure their political representation, and so forth. See ‘Ustavni zakon o pravima nacionalnih manjina’, § 4 (4).

234 The Challenges of EU Membership 17 ‘Ustavni zakon o pravima nacionalnih manjina’, §§ 9 (2), 12 (1); ‘Ustavni zakon o ljudskim pravima i slobodama i pravima etnickih i nacionalnih zajednica ili manjina u Republici Hrvatskoj’, §§ 8–10. 18 ‘Ustavni zakon o pravima nacionalnih manjina’, § 11; Law on Education and Schooling in the Language and Writing of National Minorities, § 2; Government of the Republic of Croatia, Report, pp. 33–4. 19 ‘Ustavni zakon o pravima nacionalnih manjina’, § 16. 20 While Muslims generally possess no all-encompassing religious organization, Muslims in Croatia established their common Islamic community in Croatia (Islamska zajednica u Hrvatskoj) with its headquarters in Zagreb. This enabled the government to sign the treaty in 2002, making Croatia one of only four European states which have signed such treaties with their Islamic communities, the other three being Austria, Belgium and Spain. See Ugovor Vlade Republike Hrvatske i Islamske Zajednice u Hrvatskoj o Pitanjima od Zajednickog Interesa, Zagreb, 12 December 2002, Klasa: 070-03/02-03/01, Urbroj: 5030109-02-5; Bilten Medzlisa Islamske Zajednice Zagreb, No. 35, August 2004, p. 4; Law on the Legal Status of Religious Communities; Government of the Republic of Croatia, Report, p. 50. 21 ‘Ustavni zakon o pravima nacionalnih manjina’, §§ 15 and 18. 22 Ibid., § 15 (1) and (2). 23 A case in point is the governmental National Program for the Roma (Nacionalni program za Rome) of October 2003. The purpose of the 66 pages long Program is the reduction of the discrimination against the Roma and improvement of their bad social position by a wide range of educational, social and economic measures, without thereby destroying the traditional Roma culture. 24 ‘Ustavni zakon o pravima nacionalnih manjina’, §§ 19–22. 25 Ibid., §§ 23–33. 26 Ibid., §§ 20–22, 36(2); Government of the Republic of Croatia, Report, pp. 16–17. 27 See Marinko Krmpotic´, ‘Manjine – od bremena do bogatstva drustva,’ Novi list, 7 June 2005, p. 8. 28 The terminological confusion in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina, its citizenship, cultures, religions and languages, is even bigger than in the cases of other cultural (ethnic) groups. Thus, in use are the adjectives ‘Bosnian’, but also ‘Bosniak’ (e.g. ‘Bosnian’ or ‘Bosniak’ people or language), the adjective ‘Muslim’ can signify both the religion and the traditional culture of a person, the noun ‘Bosniak’ can signify both a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a member of the ‘Bosniak people’ consisting of citizens of Muslim faith or bound to Muslim traditions, Croatia has made the ethnic Croats of Bosnia and Herzegovina citizens of Croatia and so on. In this text I use the term ‘Bosnian Muslims’ for persons of Muslim faith or tradition culturally and biologically originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina, for instance persons who in socialist Yugoslavia migrated from Bosnia and Herzegovina to other Yugoslav republics. 29 In the 1,467 war crime cases in procedure in the middle of 2003, 99 per cent of the indicted belonged to the minorities. Eighty-five per cent of ethnic Serbs sentenced for war crimes were sentenced in absence, in many cases in group trials, while no ethnic Croat was sentenced in absence. An extreme example is here the decision of a regional court in Gospic´ of August 2003, that an ethnic Serb, indicted for a war crime, is guilty not only of the crime he was indicted for, but also of the genocide Serbs have allegedly been committing on Croats during the last 500 years, since they came to Croatia together with the Ottomans with the intention to annihilate the Croats.

The EU and Interculturality in Croatia 235

30 See Siniša Tatalovic´, Etnic ki sukobi i europska sigurnost (Zagreb: Politicka kultura, 2003), pp. 188–205. 31 See Alternativni izvještaj o primjeni Okvirne konvencije za zaštitu prava nacionalnih manjina u Republici Hrvatskoj za period 1999.–2004., June 2004, III. Opc´e napomene – 1999–2004, www.chez.com/zsr/izvjesce_4.htm. 32 See Siniša Tatalovic´, Nacionalne manjine u Hrvatskoj, p. 41. 33 Hrvatska Radio-Televizija (Croatian Radio-Television), news of 21 October 2004, 20:31h. 34 News agencies AP, ATA, HINA, FENA, BTA, MIA, and Tanjug on 9 December 2004. 35 See ‘Osnovana mreza multietnickih gradova JI Evrope’, Vecernji list (internet issue), 6 July 2005, www.vecernji-list.hr/newsroom/news/croatia/326288/index.do. 36 Private communication by Vojko Obersnel, mayor of Rijeka, of 28 September 2004. 37 See ‘Doprinos daljnjem razvoju suzivota’, Novi list, 17 April 2004, www.chez.com/ zsr/forum.htm. 38 One weekly has to be extolled for its consequent independence and critique of the government from the standpoint of legality, civility and toleration, the famous Feral Tribune. 39 See Ingrid Šestan, ‘Najesen krec´e prva generacija studenata’, Novi list, 30 March 2004, www.human.pefri.hr. 40 See DD, ‘Uloga vjernika u stvaranju javnog misljenja’, Zvona, XLII (5/373), July 2004, p. 25. 41 Susak is the eastern part of Rijeka. 42 See I.Š., ‘Interkulturalnost – oblik suzivota’, Novi list, 7 November 2003; Lj.T., ‘Morcic´ i igra domina’, Novi list, 27 February 2004; skole.htnet.hr/ss-rijeka509/skola/inter.htm. 43 See Nenad Jovanovic´, ‘Teško osvojivi mali ekrani’, Novosti (weekly for Serbs in Croatia), No. 278, 15 April 2005, pp. 6–7; nn., ‘Pokrec´ e se regionalna romska televizija’, ibid., p. 7; Nenad Jovanovic´ , ‘Ka informativnom servisu manjina’, Novosti, 6 May 2005, pp. 4–5. 44 See Mirjana Grce, ‘Dijalog je naša ljudska sudbina’ (interview with Dinko Popovic´ ), Novi list, 24 June 2004; Michael Weninger, ‘Dialog mit Religionen und Kirchen für Erweiterung der europäischen Integrationen’, Mirotvorni izazov XII (31–2) (2004), 13–17. 45 Private communication by Julija Koš of the Jewish community in Zagreb, 22 September 2004. 46 See M.G., ‘Razmjena ekumenskih iskustava’, Novi list, 21 July 2004, p. 15; Danijel Delonga, ‘Med¯unarodni ekumenski i med¯ureligijski susret u Rijeci: “Ekumenizam prihvac´amo i slijedimo ono sto nam je Krist zadao”’, Glas Koncila 31 (1571), 1 August 2004. 47 See M. Grce, ‘Postivanje stava svakog covjeka’, Novi list, 28 October 2004. 48 See ‘Susret kardinala Bozanic´a i muftije Omerbasic´a’, Informativna katolicka agencija, 13 July 2004; I.F., ‘Kardinal Bozanic´ prvi put u zagrebackoj dzamiji’, Novi list, 14 July 2004. 49 The expression ‘povjesnicara/istoricara’ illustrates the tense relations between Serbs and Croats, and more generally also those between other cultural groups previously united in Yugoslavia. While Croats and Serbs can very easily understand each other, since the dissolution of the common state they are anxious to clearly define their ‘national identity’, which includes a particular language. As a consequence, from what in Yugoslavia used to be the Serbo-Croatian language they attempt to make two languages, the Serbian and the Croatian. Similarly, Bosnian

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50

51

52 53

54

55 56 57

58 59

60 61

Muslims try to develop a Bosniak language from the Serbo-Croatian. Examples of these efforts are words that in Serbo-Croatian used to be legitimate synonyms and are now ascribed to only one of the languages. In the expression ‘povjesnicara/ istoricara’ both ‘povjesnicar’ and` ‘istoricar’ mean ‘historian’, but the Croats insist that the word ‘povjesnicar’ of Slavic origin is specifically Croatian, while the Serbs accept the word ‘istoricar’ of Latin origin as Serbian. In order to avoid nationalistic conflicts about the equal treatment of the two languages, in the title of the project both words are used simultaneously. An excellent description of the regressivity and provincialism of the still virulent Serbian nationalism, stirred up in the 1980s, is given in Olivera Milosavljevic´,  nosti i kvarenju nacije’, Dijalog povjesnicara–istoricara 5, ‘Autostereotipi – o autentic (Zagreb: Zaklada Friedrich Naumann, 2002), pp. 83–96. Hans-Georg Fleck, ‘O Dijalogu povjesnicara/istoricara: kriticka povijesna znanost,  emu dijalog politicko obrazovanje i drustveni pluralizam’, in Igor Graovac, ed., C  ara/istoric  ara? (Zagreb: Dijalog, 2005), pp. 17–37. povjesnic www.rijeka-drzava.com. A laudable exception is Vesna Kusin, who in her article ‘Politicka misija crkve’, Vjesnik, 30 May 2005, p. 16, stresses the necessity of the inclusion of the Catholic Church and other religious communities in political processes, especially in interreligious dialogues as a condition for peace and reconciliation. On the points (iii) and (iv) see Tena Erceg, ‘Rasna netrpeljivost i “govor mrznje” – med¯unarodni i hrvatski standardi i praksa’, Centar za ljudska prava (Zagreb, 2004), www.human-rights.hr/izvjestajgovor.htm; Stojan Obradovic´, ‘Manjine u procesu postkonfliktne komunikacije’, Regionalni glasnik za promociju kulture manjinskih prava i med¯uetnicke tolerancije, No. 1, 30 July 2004, www.stina.hr. At present their proportion in the population lies around 5 per cent. This figure represents those remaining following the expulsion of most of the Serbs in 1995. See Damir Grubisa, ‘Rastuc´a srbofobija’, Novi list, 27 May 2005, p. 6. See Tena Erceg, ‘Poloz aj nacionalnih manjina u Republici Hrvatskoj – zakonodavstvo i praksa’, Centar za ljudska prava, (2005), 13–15, www.human-rights.hr/dokumenti/polozajnm.htm. Jutarnji list, 23 December 2003, quoted in Erceg, ‘Rasna netrpeljivost i “govor mrznje” ’, pp. 12–13, www.human-rights.hr/izvjestajgovor.htm. See Predrag Blecic´, ‘Agresija na demokratska prava dijela Rijecana’, Novi list, 9 December 2004; Gordan Jelenic´, ‘Razlozi protivljenja izgradnji dz amije uopc´e nisu urbanisticki’, Novi list, 15 December 2004; Damir Cupac´, ‘Ne pristajemo na Hostov breg’, Novi list, 16 December 2004; Mirjana Grce, ‘U Rijeci treba nac´i odgovarajuc´i prostor za izgradnju dzamije’, Novi list, 5 February 2004. When I visited the community on 3 August 2004, he was sound asleep when I rang the door-bell, and remained so during my ten-minute visit. Dinko Popovic´ as quoted in Mirjana Grce, ‘U Rijeci treba nac´i odgovarajuc´i prostor za izgradnju dzamije’, Novi list, 5 February 2004.

Conclusion Stanislav J. Kirschbaum

In her essay on three Central European thinkers from the Communist period who thought about Europe, Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine puts forward the main dilemma that the European unification process faces today and for which Central Europe may be able to provide a solution: Either Europe remains obstinate in following a path that is purely institutional, driven by economics and accounting, and destined to become at best a huge market dominated by the ideology of ‘growth for the sake of growth.’ This is the path whereby its meaning is ruled by its objectives . . . Or we understand that there is urgency in inverting the perspective and inaugurating a sort of Copernican revolution in our approach to Central Europe . . . If the other Europe could appear in the 1980s as the place where the European spirit was threatened with annihilation, it appears today, through its greatest thinkers, as the place of its possible recovery.1 This volume is about Central Europe, about some of the issues linked to its integration in the EU, leading ultimately to the question of the meaning of Europe. It does not presume to bring about a Copernican revolution in our approach to Central Europe, although it does encourage it, but it does draw attention to the need to look at Central Europe not as a geographical, demographic, or economic addition to the EU, but rather as an incoming original entity that can make a defining contribution to European unification and, above all, to the meaning of Europe. The Laignel-Lavastine volume takes a humanistic–philosophical approach; this volume casts a historical and empirical look at particular issues. It does so in the three sections, which map out specific themes; the first deals with the area as a whole and its premise is that Central Europe’s past differs to such an extent from Western Europe’s that it cannot but play a specific role in defining the Europe that is in the making. Three years mark dramatically the history of Central Europe: 1526, 1919 and 1989. The first refers to the battle of Mohács on 29 August 1526, which ushered in the Ottoman Turkish presence with important consequences for 237

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the political, economic and social development of the region. The defence of Europe against the Turks gave the Habsburgs, the ruling family from Austria that also acquired the crowns of Bohemia and Hungary as a result of that battle, its main mission, which, even after it ceased to have any pertinence, justified their refusal to allow political development in their empire, which attained its final definition in the second half of the nineteenth century. Feudal dynastic rule held sway until the twentieth not just in the Habsburg Empire, but elsewhere in the region, namely in the Romanov and, eventually but to a lesser degree, also in the Hohenzollern lands (Map 1). In addition, there is another important event with consequences for Central Europe, which took place only a few decades before, in 1492, when Christopher Columbus discovered the New World. The results would be far-reaching and long-lasting: the economic relations between Central and Western Europe that had hitherto been developing and benefiting Central Europe began to decrease as Western Europe turned to the discovered lands and exploited their mineral and agricultural riches for its own economic advantage. For the next four centuries, Central Europe underwent, as a result of these two events, a political and economic development separate from that of Western Europe, while, at the same time, keeping in contact with its intellectual and political trends (see Chronology). The nature of this interaction and its meaning for Central Europe give an indication of the relationship between the two parts of Europe today and what this represents for the continent’s future and the meaning of Europe. Central Europe’s separate development often leaves the impression that there are few common roots for these two parts of the continent and that Central Europe has more in common with Eastern Europe, a region of Europe that Western Europe regarded as different from itself, as Larry Wolff reminds us.2 One country that is often portrayed along these lines is Slovakia. In his Chapter on Slovakia’s European roots, Stanislav J. Kirschbaum clearly shows this not to be the case. He traces these roots to the role played by religion, religious orders, and especially the University of Trnava. The case of Slovakia is interesting because it brings out the ambiguities of Central Europe’s political development. Along with the Ottoman occupation of Hungary from 1526 to 1699, the region experienced the religious conflicts brought about by the Reformation. After the Ottoman occupation, the Hungarian archbishopric of Ostrihom was moved to the Western Slovak town of Trnava, which then became the centre of the Counter-Reformation in Central Europe. Universitas tyrnaviensis was a Hungarian university created to undertake this mission and it attracted students from all over the continent. It was one of Central Europe’s outstanding institutions of higher learning, and, because of its location, also greatly benefited the Slovaks. However, with the end of the Ottoman occupation of Hungary and the consolidation of the kingdom by the Hungarian nobility, it was moved to Buda in Hungary in 1777, on the eve of major political changes in Western Europe. This ended the university’s European role, eliminated higher education in Slovakia, and cast the Slovaks

Conclusion 239

on path of national survival, which affected their overall development. Slovakia’s fate reflected, mutatis mutandis, that of other nations in Central Europe, a region that, since 1526, was dealing in various ways with the political and economic consequences of the Ottoman invasion and the decreasing commercial relations with Western Europe. All shared one outcome: their national elites faced rulers and ruling classes that rejected the Western European intellectual and ideological currents of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that their populations sought to espouse; as far as the Slovaks are concerned, they had the added misfortune of being locked in a struggle for survival against Budapest’s policy of Magyarization. The example of Slovakia underlines forcefully the extent to which Central Europe had been cast on a different political trajectory from that of Western Europe. The political development that Central Europe underwent until the twentieth century, when the dynasties fell, created an important political and economic gap with the western part of Europe. Encouraged by the intellectual and political developments in Western Europe, the nations that populated the ruling empires of Central Europe clamoured not only for regime change, but also self-determination. Change came about just after the First World War, ushering in the second dramatic date in the region’s history, 18 January 1919, when the Paris Peace Conference convened. Not only was the region reorganized on the basis of new states, but democracy was espoused by all of them (Map 2). However, most of these new states succumbed very quickly to authoritarianism, in part as a result of their own development, but also as a result of the influence and later the territorial and political ambitions of powerful neighbours espousing totalitarian ideologies. Since the nineteenth century, in response to the social and economic consequences of industrialization, Europe found itself in the throes of a competition among three ideologies: democracy, fascism and Communism. All three exerted their influence in Central Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and because of the region’s development, the extreme ones proved to be more successful in their political appeal. After the defeat of fascism by force of arms in 1945, the European continent split in two for almost five decades, locked in an implacable ideological battle between democracy and Communism (Map 3). By the end of the last decade of the century, Communism had discredited itself in the states of Central Europe, which returned to democracy and advocated union with Western Europe, then in the process of creating the EU. Fifteen years later, in May 2004, eight Central European states, Slovakia included, and in January 2007 two more, joined the EU as it proceeded to enlarge eastwards (Map 4). Such an objective would not have been achieved by these Central European states had they not had European roots. The European roots of the Central European nations are, of course, as diverse as their national histories; what these nations also share along with common roots is the region’s overall development, a development that had their leaders consider cooperative solutions. One of the consequences of the

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Peace Treaties after the First World War was that most, but not all of the Central European nations, were given a chance to embrace not only democracy, but also self-determination. New states were created, and were generally defined as national, but were for the most part multinational in composition because of important national minorities; two were even multinational, Czecho-Slovakia and the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, later renamed Yugoslavia. However, this reorganization created a region that ended up being weak politically and economically and thus the object of territorial expansion from its more powerful neighbours. As we have seen, democracy failed to take root – even before the first decade after the war was over, most states in Central Europe, with the exception of Czecho-Slovakia, renamed Czechoslovakia, had become authoritarian – which set the stage for the successful application throughout Central Europe of the ‘divide and conquer’ maxim of the Roman Empire, first by Germany, which plunged Europe in a second world conflict two decades after the end of the first and then by the Soviet Union in the aftermath of that second world war. But long before this happened, Central European intellectuals and statesmen, as Francesco Leoncini points out, had considered solutions for the region in order to ensure its development and security. Leoncini takes a fresh approach to the history of Central Europe, arguing that it had a double fate, as an area of competition between the great powers, but also as a place of continuous attempts at what he defines as aggregation among the various populations. He assesses positively the role of nationalism in the region, which he prefers to define as national self-defence, and he sees that principle as one linked intimately with the federative principle. Unfortunately, these two principles were not able to find an appropriate symbiosis in Central Europe. His rapid tour d’horizon of federal solutions that were proposed but never put into effect brings home the necessity of balancing a larger project with the needs of those who are called upon to bring it about. And that, of course, is the challenge that the EU has been facing ever since it considered enlargement to the East after the end of Communism in 1989, the third dramatic year in Central Europe’s history. Of all the factors that the nations and states of Central Europe have in common and which distinguish them from Western Europe, the experience of Communist rule (Map 3), which came to an unexpected abrupt end on 9 November 1989, is the one that had the most direct impact on the EU enlargement process and that may, ultimately, also have some direct influence on the definition of Europe. It is during this period, as Laignel-Lavastine points out, that the meaning of Europe was nurtured in the dissident circles of Central Europe while the main building blocks, essentially of an economic nature, were being laid in Western Europe. If 1989 was just another year that moved the European unification project forward in Western Europe, it had an altogether different meaning for the nations and states of Central Europe, as Oskar Gruenwald reminds us in his chapter on the 1989 revolutions.

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Gruenwald examines how civil society, a conditio sine qua non for the successful transition from a single-party political system to a democratic one, began to develop in each country through the activities of individuals and dissident movements. At stake was not just a question of regime change. Like Laignel-Lavastine, Gruenwald pays a great deal of attention to the ideals, hopes and aspirations that sustained these activities, which, within a decade after the fall of Communism, came to be obscured by ethnic conflict. In addition, Gruenwald’s chapter proposes a model of transition from authoritarian systems to political democracy that discloses why the transition remains incomplete and why he feels that the quest for universal human rights, democracy, pluralism, tolerance and an open society is an ongoing project. His extensive examination of dissident activities in the various countries reminds us that Central Europe continues to offer scope for a debate about the future if only because such questions were on the agenda not only in the immediate Communist past, but also in the more distant past. As LaignelLavastine suggests, and the chapters by Kirschbaum, Leoncini and Gruenwald point out, the lessons from Central Europe’s past provide enough of a basis to look for a definition of Europe that is not driven merely by economic and bureaucratic imperatives, but rather by the aspirations of its peoples, aspirations that were first articulated at a time and in a place where they seemed utterly unattainable. The second theme that differentiates Central from Western Europe focuses on the national state. It brings together the two developments in Central Europe that account for the region’s specificity, namely state creation and the Communist experiment. The experience of state creation in Central Europe, which took place later than in Western Europe, was such that issues of identity were fundamental in underpinning the legitimacy of each state. Not that this was not the case in the Western European states; each national history makes it clear that identity is fundamental, as the compromise on European Union banknotes and coins also points out. Rather it is the late creation of the national state and the challenges to its definition and development, in particular during the Communist period, which made the issue of state creation such a percussive one in Central Europe. In such a context, national symbols acquired a great deal of significance. They had been important elements of feudal identity and their importance carried over in the newly formed states, and especially when these states, as happened after the Second World War, found themselves subjected to the ideological programme of the Soviet Union, a programme that undervalued national identity in favour of an international one, namely proletarian internationalism. National symbols became instruments not only of national self-affirmation but also of resistance; they were given various interpretations, took on varied forms, but also acquired ambiguous meanings. One of the developments that surprised observers in the post-Communist era was the completion of the self-determination revolution that had been

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launched at the end of the First World War. Three multinational states, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, collapsed as their national components broke away to form their own states (Map 4). As these new states sought to join the European Union, it is interesting to ask what role the national symbols that stood for self-determination, resistance and opposition played and continue to play in Central Europe. Four Chapters tackle this question and they point to two tendencies. The first is to see national symbols as manifestations of national insecurity. Stefan Samersky demonstrates in his chapter how Wenceslas, because of his longevity as a symbol, especially as a religious symbol, could be made to fit in wherever and whenever needed: in the Bohemian state, in the First Czechoslovak Republic, in the Protectorate of Bohemia–Moravia, and during the Communist period. However, in the post-Communist period, this religious symbol was stripped of its religious content and Wenceslas Day became a secular state holiday. Samersky concludes that Wenceslas was a unifying figure in all of these transformations, but he also warns ‘that tradition stands for helplessness in the face of uncertainty or pending danger’. A similar conclusion is also articulated by Krista Zach on Moldavian Prince Stephen in Romania, where she shows how Stephen became the reference for a national identity and how a medieval hero was redefined at Putna monastery in 1992 to become a new national symbol. But she also writes: ‘The church ceremony of canonizing a national hero as a patron saint of the Orthodox Church in secular Romania had a certain ambiguity. It suggested that Romania remains a country at a crossroad between modern and traditional options and challenges.’ The second tendency is to use, even to manipulate, symbols for outward national affirmation. Juliane Brandt’s chapter on the secularized cult of St Stephen in modern Hungary is fascinating in the way it shows how a simple cultural event such as a rock opera on one of Hungary’s greatest historical heroes, St Stephen, could be regarded as an apology of the Communist regime, as a work of art with a strong national undercurrent, or, as is the case today, as a demonstration of Hungary’s European heritage. In addition, the ambivalence of the use of musical means within the framework of a modern listening experience as well as some other artistic solutions hinted at other contextual patterns and allowed it to be read it as a work of opposition. In all cases, it stood for an affirmation of Hungarian identity. For Mieczysl´aw B.B. Biskupski, the elevation of Józef Pil´sudski, the architect of Polish independence in 1918, into a national symbol proffers an unusual social phenomenon, namely the symbolic recasting of the focus of Polish history from the collapse in the partitions of the eighteenth century to the victory in 1918 with the nineteenthcentury insurrections representing the democratization of the noble ethos of national service. He points out that during the 2005 presidential elections in Poland all candidates gave Pil´sudski as their choice for the model Polish statesman. Clearly the Polish state needed a national symbol to assert its modern identity and found it in recent times rather than in an older historical period.

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Whatever their form and however old or new their content, national symbols normally celebrate a national state, but we also know from Central European history, indeed even from Western European history, that there were no national states that could claim to be nationally homogeneous; this was not for lack of an attempt. Chapter 8 in Part II, by John J. Kulczycki, deals with this issue in Poland, in particular with the attempts by the Communist regime to create an ethnically homogeneous Polish nation-state during the Second World War. It is a case study of one of the consequences of the radical application of nationalism in Central Europe; his conclusion is indeed valid for the entire region: ‘The nationalist dream of self-determination proved to be, one suspects not just in this case, a nightmare of suffering and loss for a substantial number of those for whom it was intended.’ The legacy of the national state in Central Europe is, thus, a paradoxical one. To create one was the teleological goal of every nationalist movement, but its late appearance and the ideological challenges that it faced from fascism and Communism in the twentieth century made it, with some exceptions, a weak state. The articles on national symbols lead us to conclude that these symbols are an indication of this weakness, of a state-building process that is yet to be completed. This legacy of the national state is one that the EU must take into account. Recent events bear out the importance of this legacy: while most Central European states fully accepted all the conditions for entry into the EU, for those that were admitted, the full meaning of membership became the object of public debate after entry. The Czech, Polish and Slovak elections of 2006 clearly signalled some public unease with the consequences of EU membership, an unease that manifested itself in the electoral success of nationalist parties, but also of left-wing parties whose political programme aimed at cushioning the economic and social consequences of EU membership. Unlike the EU’s founding members, the member states from Central Europe are young democracies that are in the throes of democratic and economic development at the same time as they are finding their place in the EU. The national state is the reference point for their people and the search for national symbols is, as it was in the past, an indication of a debate in Central Europe about the region’s future, especially as a full member of the EU; but it is also about the meaning of Europe. The Central European states that acquired membership in the EU did so in record time. They also did so according to an agenda that was set by the EU. That fact alone created additional challenges for the candidates. The third theme of the volume deals with some of the challenges of EU membership, and this volume has taken an eclectic approach. There are a number of good works that deal with the overall process, focusing primarily on the role of the EU.3 The chapters in this part of the volume focus on the perspective from Central Europe on specific questions, all raising the issue of Europeanization. Bas¸ak Alpan shows that the Europeanization of Central Europe was more equivalent to the EU’s accession process than it was a process that entailed

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cultural or deep-rooted dimensions. The backward glance that she casts, not unlike Laignel-Lavastine, shows the region to have been given many definitions before the collapse of Communism, not just by its own intellectuals, but also by knowledgeable Western observers. However, her examination of the ways in which ‘Europe’ was articulated by the main political parties of Hungary and Poland after the fall of Communism and how it became part of the political discourse indicates that that the depiction of Europe in existentialist and identity terms questioning the extent of belonging/non-belonging to Europe by the dissidents and in the transition literature in the late 1980s and early 1990s was unrelated to the main premises for the use and articulation of Europe by the political parties in the post-1990 period. Did the process of Europeanization bring about a disconnection with Central Europe’s past? Alpan gives an affirmative answer to this question, for which the explanation is found in ‘Euroscepticism’, a form of opposition to European integration. For Alpan, as for Laure Neumayer, it is a concept that describes the impact that EU membership has had in the post-Communist electoral process. Neumayer looks at three Central European states, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. She shows how there was a linkage between ideology and strategy in party positions on Europe before and after accession to the EU, and that European integration was used to define the rules of political competition in the post-Communist democracies. She also indicates that there was not necessarily a disconnection, but rather realignment: There was a strong continuity with the pre-accession period as regards the divisions, labels and classifications that structured political discourses. ‘Eurorealists’ switched from ‘critical outsiders’ to ‘critical insiders’. Presenting the elections as a second referendum on EU accession, they claimed that they would ‘change the EU from within’, either to create a ‘Europe of nation-states’ or to strengthen the social dimension of European integration. Alpan and Neumayer do not contradict each other; rather they indicate, each in her own way, that membership in the EU exerted considerable political influence on the post-Communist transformation process, and that Europeanization had not eliminated questions and issues that not so long ago were in the forefront of Central European thinking about the meaning of Europe, but rather put them on the back burner, at least in the years following immediately EU accession. The importance of the impact of EU accession on Central European politics is brought out forcefully by Ingrid Röder, An Schrijvers and Mojmir Krizan, all of whom also ask the question of the Europeanization of Central Europe. What is particularly striking in the Röder chapter is the case of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which, because of their common cultural and historical background, led to the assumption that similar factors during the

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Europeanization process brought about similar changes in all areas of the acquis communautaire and also in the area of gender equality. Her research indicates that this did not turn out to be the case: ‘Both countries implemented gender equality formally, which means they incorporated EU legislation into national legislation. Nonetheless . . . the Czech Republic has so far been more Europeanized than Slovakia as more projects were completed.’ What about Poland, whose approach to accession is known to have been more problematic than that of some other Central European candidates? Schrijvers shows in her chapter that, during the debate on the future of the EU, initiated at the Laeken Summit in 2001, Poland, an especially difficult, Eurosceptic and anti-federalist member, at least in the perception of some West European political actors and observers, had, in the constitutional convention debates, a view of the future of Europe that was much more evenhanded than is generally assumed. The Polish vision of the EU spoke of a balance between the intergovernmental and the community approach. Clearly, Europeanization was not being rejected, merely adapted to suit Poland’s assessment of its role and position in the EU. The final chapter deals with Croatia, not yet a member, rather a candidate for EU admission, which experienced ethnic conflict and war in the postCommunist period. What pressure has the EU been exerting and how has Croatia been responding? Krizan shows that the Croatian government, under EU pressure, began to take measures to reduce ethnic hatred against Serbs and Bosnian Muslims as well as the influence of various nationalist groups; that it enabled the Serbs expelled in 1995 to return to their homes; strengthened the legal protection of national minorities; promoted intercultural contacts; and thus convinced the EU that the country was on the correct path toward accession. The chapter gives examples of the sites, forms and developments of intercultural communication in Croatia. But Krizan also strikes a note of caution, pointing out that respect for human rights and intercultural communication are still facing serious obstacles resulting both from ethnic nationalism and the general deficit of political culture in the country. The legacy of Central Europe’s recent past still lingers in that part of Europe and acts as a reminder to the rest of the region of the need for the development of regional cooperation and the laying down of a stable basis for European unification. Although they accepted unconditionally the conditions set out by the EU for membership, the EU’s Central European members did not, by the same token, necessarily submit to any definition or meaning of Europe. At first glance, as Laignel-Lavastine points out, it would seem that they accepted that ‘its meaning is ruled by its objectives’, for this is what the accession process was all about. The chapters in this volume, as well as the electoral results in some countries since accession, suggest, however, that from a Central European perspective, there is more to the process. All of them point to a Central European specificity, which the EU must not only take into account, but also incorporate in its search for ‘the meaning of Europe’.

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The EU is a sui generis experiment still in the making, and it is up to its members to see that it reflects the values for which so many wars were fought and so many died in Europe. The Central Europeans know something about this particular legacy, and the EU will be the richer if it embraces and articulates the visions that have arisen from it. There needs to be a discussion on the ‘meaning of Europe’, one that takes into account not just the contemporary imperatives of managing enlargement and a modern and globalizing economy, but above all the aspirations that have arisen out of the historical experience of all EU citizens, especially those from Central Europe. In addition, the admission of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 brought Orthodoxy, one of Christianity’s three branches, into the debate on the ‘meaning of Europe’. By admitting these two countries, the EU found itself, more by inadvertence than by design, in the position of bringing Christianity full circle by assembling its three branches in one political institution. Christianity is what defined Europe for over one thousand years, alas also the source of many of its conflicts, but equally one of the continent’s legacies; its presence and importance in Central Europe have been and continue to be fundamental. Of equal importance, and arising from the more recent experience of fascist and Communist rule not just in the two countries, but elsewhere in Central Europe, is the quest for freedom, peace, universal human rights, democracy, pluralism, tolerance and an open society.4 Central Europe can thus be seen to offer two general leitmotifs for all the citizens of the EU to consider and incorporate as they and their leaders seek to define ‘the meaning of Europe’. However, one look at the current map of Europe (Map 4) makes it clear that the logic of EU enlargement in Central Europe requires that one more round take place that includes the remaining states and nations of the Balkans. This is a challenge where the past as well as present problems come together with full force in the debate: of particular immediate concern is Kosovo, a province of Serbia, which appears as an intractable problem that the international community, but more particularly the EU, is called upon to resolve in the near future. Timothy Garton Ash writes in a daring article that ‘[t]he way forward for Kosovo is not nation-building or state-building, but memberstate-building. And for Serbia too. This means European leaders having the courage and vision to say that we actually want a further enlargement of the EU, because only then will peace be secured in the Balkans and Europe be whole and free.’ He suggests that the next enlargement take place in 2014, the year that will celebrate the outbreak of the First World War, and include Albania, Bosnia and Montenegro. He adds in conclusion: ‘As it approaches its 50th birthday this March [2007], the European economic community that became a union has an extraordinary story to tell about the spread of peace, freedom and the rule of law (see www.europeanstory.net). But a political narrative has to describe where we are heading as well as where we are coming from.’5 The need as well as the way to engage in finding a definition of ‘the meaning of Europe’ could not be stated more clearly.

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Given their history and the legacy of their thinkers, it therefore behoves the political leaders and the elites of the member states of Central Europe to take this message to the other members of the Union, and especially to Brussels, where the danger of the appearance of a nightmare from the past looms if a dialogue on ‘the meaning of Europe’ is not engaged soon. Echoing the exhortations of Laignel-Lavastine, the Slovene Drago Jancar writes: ‘If the new Europe is only a product of the economy and the Brussels administration, won’t its labyrinths at the start of this century be the realization of [Franz] Kafka’s labyrinths at the start of the last?’6 Central Europe, as the chapters in this volume indicate, brings to the EU a particular experience, one that is certainly as diversified and complex as that of Western Europe, but one that, given the history of the region, also begs that the lessons of the past be heard and taken into account as the Union consolidates, enlarges and embarks on the search for ‘the meaning of Europe’. This is the intellectual and political challenge that this volume offers to the reader.

Notes 1 Alexandra Laignel-Lavastine, Esprits d’Europe. Autour de Czeslaw Milosz, Jan Patoc  ka, István Bibó (Paris: Calmann-Levy, 2005). pp. 32–3. 2 Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: the Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). 3 See for example Heather Grabbe, The EU’s Transformative Power. Europeanization Through Conditionality in Central and Eastern Europe (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Willem Maas, Creating European Citizens (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield 2007), Milada Anna Vachudová, Europe Undivided: Democracy, Leverage, and Integration after Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Michael Artis, Anindya Banerjee and Massismiliano Marcellino, eds, The Central and East European Countries and the European Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier, eds, The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); Jouquim Roy and Roberto Domínguez, eds, Towards the Completion of Europe. Analysis and Perspectives of the New European Union Enlargement (Coral Gables, FL: Jean Monnet/University of Miami, 2006); and James Wesley Scott, ed., EU Enlargement, Region Building and Shifting Borders of Inclusion and Exclusion (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006). 4 As the British scholar and journalist Timothy Garton Ash writes: ‘European leaders miss a lot by not listening carefully enough to what matters to citizens. I’ve made a little experiment of my own in this respect in the past few months, with a website (europeanstory.net) on which people can respond to a proposal for a new European narrative, told in terms of our progress from different pasts toward six shared goals: freedom, peace, law, prosperity, diversity and solidarity . . . So far, freedom comes out way ahead of all the other goals . . . It’s also already clear from the debate that we need to add a seventh common goal, concerning the environment.’ Timothy Garton Ash, ‘The EU’s Midlife Crisis’, The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 23 March 2007. 5 Timothy Garton Ash, ‘Kosovo has Earned a Place’, The Guardian Weekly (London), 23 February – 1 March 2007, p. 3. 6 Drago Jancar, ‘Central Europe: Utopia or Reality’, Eurozine, http://www.eurozine.com/ articles/2004-08–31-jancar-en.html

Index Note: ‘n’ after a page number refers to a note on that page. Academia Istropolitana, 15, 16 Action Programme on Equal Opportunities for women and men (1996–2000), 184 accession criteria (process) see European Union accession programmes see European Union acquis communautaire see European Union Adalbert, Saint, 82, 83, 88, 90n Adames¸ teanu, Gabriela, 96 Albania, 36, 37, 41, 55n, 217, 222, 246 Alexander the Good, Prince, 92 Almond, Gabriel, 35 Amsterdam, Treaty of, 190 Andrew, Saint, 92 anti-federalism, 190, 193, 196, 198ff, 208, 209, 213n anti-politics, 148, 149 Antipovich, Mikola, 54 Arad, battle of, 75 Árpád (Hungarian prince), 67 dynasty, 66 Assmann, Jan, 69 Association of Polish Journalists, 49 Association of Writers, 49 ausgleich (Austro-Hungarian Compromise), 29, 66 Austria, 234n, 238 Austria-Hungary, 26, 27 Austrians, 103–4 Austro-Hungarian Compromise see Asugleich Austro-Slavism, 26, 28, 29 autochthons, see natives Bahro, Rudolf, 37 Balbín, Josef, 83 Bálint, Sándor, 65 Baltic States (Republics), 30, 36, 37, 55n Battyány, Lajos, 66 Bauer, Tamás, 45 Béla IV, 67

Belarus, 55n, 124 Belvedere (Belweder), 108, 110, 111, 1190n ‘Belvedere Circle’, 27 Benda, Václav, 42 Beria, Lavrenty, 50 Berlin–Baghdad line, 26 Berlin–Trieste–Otranto line, 23 Berlin Wall, 146 Berzsenyi, Dániel, 66 Bethlen, Gábor, 67 Bethmann Hollweg, Theobald von, 23 Bibó, István, 2 Bocskai, István, 67 Bohemia (Bohemian Lands), 24, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 88, 89, 238, 242 Bohemia-Moravia, Protectorate of, 242 Bohemian Brethren, 83 Bohley, Barbel, 39 Boleslav, Prince, 81 −s-Gabcikovo-Nagymáros Dam, 46 Bo Bosnia, 25, 26, 30, 217, 222, 234n, 246 Bosniak, 234n, 236n Bosnian Muslims, 220, 230, 233n, 234n, 246 Bosnians, 28, 216 Bozanic´, Josip Cardinal, 225 Brâncoveanu, Constantin, Prince, 95 Brown, Archie, 43 Budapest School, 37, 43 Bujak, Zbigniew, 50 Bukovina, 93, 97 Bulanyi, György, 44 Bulgaria, 36, 37, 41, 55n, 100n, 190, 217, 222, 223, 246 Bulgarians, 92 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 53 Burgess, Adam, 11 Byzantine Empire, 25 Byzantium, 13, 71 Calvinists see religion Camp of National Unity, 113 canonization, 63, 64, 70, 76, 77n, 78n, 92, 94, 96, 98, 99 248

Index 249 Catholicism, Roman, 15, 76, 84, 94, 141n, 216, 220 Church, 14, 28, 42, 63, 64ff, 84, 87, 88, 89, 224–5, 231 Ceaus¸ escu, Nicolae, 96 Central Europe area of competition, 25ff confederation of, 18, 30 definition of, 23, 24ff federation of, 18, 30 history of, 30 and Hodz a’s federation project, 24, 30 and manipulation of nationalism, 30 as a place of autonomous cultural elaboration, 28 as a place of continuous attempts at aggregation, 25 Central Powers, 102, 103, 104, 117n Charles III, 65 Charles IV, Emperor, 82, 86, 89 Charter 77 see Czechoslovakia China, People’s Republic, 35, 36, 55 Christian Democratic Union–Czechoslovak Popular Party (Kr est’anská a Demokratické Unie–Ceskoslovenská Strana Lidová, or KDU–CSL), 162, 167, 168 Christianity, 13, 14, 70, 71, 73, 81 Christianization, 13, 64 Chocim, Battle of, 116 chromatic chant, 72 Churchill, Winston, 55n, 123 Cirtautas, Arista Maria, 30 civic associations, 219, 224, 225, 231 civic culture, 32ff, 40, 43, 47, 51, 56n, 225 Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska or PO), 173 civic values, 35, 36, 51 civil society, 32, 33ff, 99, 146, 147, 149 collective memory, 69ff, 77, 97 Comenius University, 18 commemoration, 66, 67, 69, 77 communicative memory, 69ff Communism in Central Europe, 2 in Slovakia, 20 virtual, 51ff Community Programme on Gender Equality (2001–2005), 183, 184

Conquest, Robert, 34 Coordination Body of the Councils of National Minorities, 222 Cosmas of Prague, 82 Council of Europe, 222 Counter-Reformation, see religion Courtois, Stéphane, 35 Cracow Declaration, 173–4 Croatia, 42, 215–36, 245 constitution, 21–218, 228 Croatian Democratic Union (Hrvatska Demokratska Zajednica or CDU), 216, 218, 227, 230 Independent State of, 220 minorities, negative discrimination of, 220–3, 228–9 minority institutions, 219–22 minority policies and legislation, 217–19 Social-Democratic Party (SocijalDemokratska Partija or SDP), 217, 230 Cuba, 35, 55 Curzon Line, 124 Cyril (Constantine), Saint, 13 Czarnecki, Ryszard, 168, 169 Czech Lands, 24 Czech national revival, 26 Czech Republic, 23, 81, 87, 88, 89, 147, 150, 151, 179ff, 159ff, 244 Civic Democratic Party (Obc anská Demokratická Strana or ODS), 163 Communist Party of Bohemia-Moravia (Komunistická Strana Cech a Moravy or KSCM), 163 Czech Social-Democratic Party (Ceská Strana Sociálne Demokratická or CSSD), 162, 166, 167, 169 Movement for the RepublicCzechoslovak Republican Party (SPR-RSC), 151, 162 Czechoslovak Republic, First, 12, 84, 85, 88, 89, 242 Czecho-Slovak Republic (CzechoSlovakia), 12, 29, 240, Czechoslovakia, 19, 33, 37, 38, 39ff, 50, 55n, 123, 180, 240 Charter 77, 40ff, 42, 43, 50, 52, 148, 156n

250 Index Defence of the Unjustly Persecuted (Výbor na obranu nespravedlive stíhaných or VONS), 40 Democratic Initiative, 40 Jazz Section of the Union of Musicians, 39ff Petlice (‘Padlock’) Press, 40 Prague Spring, 39, 147 Csurka, István, 44, 166 Daniel, Orthodox bishop, 98 Danube Circle, 46 Dawes Plan, 27 Deák, Ferenc, 66 de Gaulle, Charles, 11 Demszky, Gábor, 43, 44, 46 Denmark, ix Dinescu, Mircea, 96 dissidents, 32, 146, 148, 149, 154, 155, 156n Dmowski, Roman, 105, 112 Dózsa, György, 74, 80n Dual Monarchy, 25 Dualism, 63, 66 Duray, Miklós, 40 Dumbovic´, Gordana, 228 Eastern Europe, 3, 11–12, 13, 20, 32, 33ff, 36, 39, 146, 147, 148, 149, 151, 154, 238 education, 1 enlargement process, 179ff England see Great Britain Elisabeth University, 18 Emericus (Krasznai, Zoltán), 71 Eminescu, Mihai, 95 Enlightenment, 147 EQUAL (Medium Term Community Action Strategy), 183 Eric of Sweden, King, 82 ethnic cleansing, 215, 231 ethnic nationalism, 215–21, 227–31 European Coal and Steel Community, xi Eurorealism, 159, 161, 165, 170, 176, Euroscepticism, 5, 150ff, 155, 157n, 159ff, 189, 244 European Commission, 179–81, 190, 191, 198, 202, 203, 205, 207, 208, 209, 211n

European Court for Human Rights, 218, 231 European Liberal, Democratic and Reform Party (ELDR), 152 European Parliament, 170, 174, 175, 177, 190, 191, 192, 197, 201, 202, 211n, 212n European People’s Party, 152 European Union, ix, 1, 12, 20, 21, 145, 153, 215 accession criteria (process), 2, 145, 149ff, 155, 159, 180, 192ff, 218, 228, 230, 243, 245 accession programmes, 183ff accession referendum, 199–200, 209, 244 acquis communautaire, 161, 167, 169, 181, 182, 183, 187n, 245 candidate countries, xi, 189ff Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), 152, 161, 172 Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), 152, 196, 198, 202, 203ff Convention, 189ff Constitution, 197, 198, 200, 207 Constitutional Treaty, 189, 190, 192, 198, 206, 207, 209 enlargement, 5, 76, 145, 154, 156n, 190, 198, 206, 210n, 239 European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), ix, 198, 203ff Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-accession (ISPA), 183 Laeken Summit, 190, 191, 193, 245 pre-accession measures, 179ff, 186 pre-accession period, 159ff, 170, 176, 244 Special Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (SAPARD), 183 Treaty of Rome, 2, 154 Europeanness, 145, 146, 148, 154, 155, 156n, 158n Europeanization, 145, 146, 150, 154, 155, 244–245 Comparative Europeanization, 180 expulsion, 135ff federalism, 23ff, 207, 213n Ferdinand II, Archduke of Tyrol, 83 Fehér, Ferenc, 43

Index 251 FIDESZ see Alliance of Young Democrats Fischer, Werner, 39 five-tonal music, 73 ‘Flying Kindergarten’, 44 Fogler, Marta, 193ff, 199ff, 204, 205, 207, 211n Fourteen Points, 19 Fowler, Brigid, 153 France, ix, 25, 27 Frankfurt’s Assembly (1848), 26 Franz Ferdinand, Prince, 27 Frasyniuk, Wladislaw, 49 Freedom Union (Unie Svobody or US), 162, 167 French Revolution, 18, 93, 123 Friedrich Naumann Foundation, 225 Fuchs, Jürgen, 37 Gado, György, 46 Gafencu Grigore, 28 Gansiniec, Ryszard, 127–9 Garton Ash, Timothy, 148, 149, 246 Gati, Charles, 39 Gazeta Polska, 111, 112 Geremek, Bronislaw, 49 German unification, 26–8 Germanization, 131, 132, 137 Germans, 12, 15, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89 Germany, ix, 19, 24, 25–6, 28, 30, 103, 128, 131, 132, 135–7, 225, 240 Federal Republic of (West Germany), 37 German Democratic Republic (East Germany), 37ff, 55n gender equality, 179ff gender mainstreaming, 182, 183, 185 George, Saint, 92 Géza, prince, 70–1 Ghyka, Vladimir, 94 Giertych, Roman, 153 Gisela, princess, 73 Glasnost Club, 45 Gomma, Paul 52 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 12, 51–2 Gotovina, Ante, 228 Grabowska, Genowefa, 193ff, 197, 199, 211n Grabski, Wl´adysl´aw, 131 Gray, Jack, 43 Great Britain, 27, 127, 130

Great Moravia, 13, 25 Greece, 24, 123 Greek-Orthodox Church, 92 Romanian, 93–5, 97–8 Grenzfall, 38 Grigoryants, Sergey, 52 Gutkowski, Cyprian, 172 Gross, Károly, 45 Habsburgs, 15, 25, 26, 64, 65, 76, 83, 238 Habsburg Empire, 28, 238 Biedermaier, 23 crisis of the, 23, as an instrument of the CounterReformation and the national groups in the Royal Imperial Army, 28 and the occupation of BosniaHerzegovina and the Sandjak of Novi Pazar, 26 and the Popovici federation project, 27 Hanak, Peter, 147 Haraszti, Miklós, 45 Harich, Wolfgang, 37 Havel, Václav, 35, 40, 42, 52, 86, 148, 149, 156n Havemann, Robert, 37 Heczko, Alma, 128 Hegel Friedrich Georg, 25 Heinrich I, King, 86, 87 Hell, Maximilián, 17 Heller, Agnés, 43 Helsinki Final Act, 40, 53 Helsinki Watch, 38, 46, 49 Herder Gottfried Johann, 25 Herzegovina, 26, 30, 217, 222, 234n Hirsch, Ralf, 39 ‘historical rights’, 13 Hitler, Adolf, 27, 123 Hlasist, 20, 31n Hobsbawm, Eric, 26 Hodz a Milan, 24, 27, 28, 30, 31n Hohenzollerns, 238 Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Karl von, Prince (1866–1881), King (1881–1914), 93, 96 Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, Michael von, King, 97

252 Index ‘Holy Right’, 66, 68 Holy Roman Empire, 25 homeland, concept of, 125ff, 129, 130, 133, 136ff Hossu, Iuliu Cardinal, 94 Hübner, Danuta, 193ff, 210n, 212n humanism, 15 human rights, 35, 41 Universal Declaration of, 38 Hungarian Democratic Forum (Magyar Demokrata Fórum or MDF), 152, 161, 162, 166 Hungarian Justice and Life Party (Magyar Igazság és Élet Pártja or MIÉP), 162, 166 Hungarian Socialist Party (Magyar Szocialista Párt or MSzP), 162, 165, 167, 169 Hungarians, 6n, 15, 18, 28, 40, 41, 44, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 80n, 148, 222 Hungary, 13, 19, 23, 24, 50, 55n, 65, 69, 148, 150ff, 159ff, 238, 244 Alliance of Young Democrats–Hungarian Civic Party (Fiatal Demokraták Szövetsége–Magyar Polgári Párt or Fidesz), 45, 152–3, 157n, 162, 163, 169 Communist, 33, 37, 39, 43ff Democratic Union of Academic Workers, 45 dissent in, 46ff Embankment Club, 45 Foundation for the Support of the Poor (Szegényeket Támogató Alap or SZETA), 43 Reformed Rákosszentmihály Church, 44 Royal, 13, 64 samizdat in, 43ff Smallholders’ Party (Független Kisgazda – Földmunkás – és Polgári Párt or FKgP), 152, 161, 162, 168 Upper, 12 Uprising (Revolution of 1956) in, 40, 69 Hus, Jan, 14, 84, 85–7 Husák, Gustáv, 40 Hussitism, 15, 82, 86, 89 Hutsky, Matthias, 83

identity see national identity Iliescu, Ion, 97, 101n Illés band, 73 Initiative for Peace and Human rights, 38, 39 interculturality communication, 221–7 education, 223 institutions, 221–4, 230–1 Intergovernmental Conference, 189 intergovernmentalists, 191, 192, 193 International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, 228 International Jazz Federation, 39 interreligious communication, 223–4 Iorga, Nicolae, 95 Islamic community in Croatia, 219, 225, 229, 234n István, King see Stephen, King Italy, 24, 26 Ivekovic´, Rada, 23–4 Instrument for Structural Policies for Pre-accession (ISPA) see European Union Jagellonian dynasty, 25 Jager, of, 14 bishopric Jakes , Milos , 40 Janas, Zbigniew, 50 Janca, Drago, 247 Janc ík, Drahomír, 24 Jaruzelski, Wojciech, 47–8 Jászi Oszkár, 28 Jedynak, Tadeusz, 49 Jennings, Peter, 45, 52 Jesuits see religion Jews see religion John-Paul II, Pope, 42 John the New of Suceava, Saint, 92–4 Joseph, Archduke, 65, 78n Joseph II, Emperor, 84 Kádár János (regime), 43, 64, 70, 71, 72, 75 Kafka, Franz, 247 Kaldor, Mary, 146 Károlyi Mihályi, 28 Kashubs, 132, 141n Kaufman, Stuart, ix Kazakhstan, 125

Index 253 Kazinczy, Ference, 66 Kersten, Krystyna, 137 Kessler, Count Harry, 103 Khrushchev, Nikita S., 38 Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, 29 Kirschbaum, Stanislav J., 42 Kisfaludy, Sándor, 66 Klaus, Václav, 87, 170, 174 Koc is , Frantis ek, 17 Kölcsey, Ferenc, 66 Kollár, Ján, 26 Komorovský, Ján, 16, 17 Konrád, György, 6, 47, 149, 156n Kopecky, Petr, 151 Kopitar, Jernej, 28 Koppány, 64, 70–2, 73, 74, 75 Korea, North, 35 Köszegi, Ferenc, 44 Kouril, Vladimir, 39 Korec, Ján Chryzostom, 14 Kossuth, Lajos, 66, 67, 74 Kotlinowski, Marek, 153 Kos´ciuszko, Tadeusz, 112 Kosovo, x, 25, 30, 217, 246 Kovác , Michal, 11 Krakow, University of, 16 Krol, Martin, 147 Kromer íz, Parliament of, 26 Kundera, Milan, 148, 156n Kuron, Jacek, 50 Laeken Summit see European Union Laignel-Lavastine, Alexandra, 2, 6, 154, 237, 240, 241, 244, 245, 247 Lampe, Alfred, 124 Laos, 35, 55 Lateran Council, 14 Lausanne, Treaty of, 123 Lechon, Jan, 106 Lékai, Lázsló Cardinal, 44 Lengyel, László, 51 Leopold I, 67 L ´ epecki, Mieczysl´aw, 110 Le Rider Jacques, 23 Lipski, Jan Jozef, 50 Lis, Bogdan, 49 Lithuania, 42, 125, 139n Little Entente, 24 Louis of Anjou, King, 25

Lubomirski, Prince Zdzisl´aw, 103–4 Luther, Martin, 16 Lutherans see religion Maastricht, Treaty of, 161 Macedonia, 30, 217, 222, 223 Magnate uprisings (Hungary), 15, 65 Magyarization, 18, 239 Maniu Iuliu, 27, 28 Maria Theresa, Empress, 18, 65, 84 Mary, cult of, 64ff Márkus, György, 43, 160 Malý, Václav, 42 Martin Group, 20 Márton, Áron, bishop, 94 Marxism–Leninism, 20 Masaryk Tomás Garrigue, 28, 29, 30, 85 Mason, David, 47 Matthias, King, 67 Matthias Corvinus, King, 14, 25 Matthies, Frank-Wolf, 37 May Coup (1926), 108 Mazurians, 131, 132 Mec iar, Vladimír, ix, 181 Methodius, Saint, 13 ‘Menshevik Divide’, 33, 34, 54 Mesic´, Stjepan, 222, 232n Michael the Brave, Prince, 93 Michnik, Adam, 49, 50 Mickiewicz, Adam, 109 Middle Ages, 14, 64, 82, 83, 84, 88, 89 Mihajlov, Mihalo, 52 Mil´osz, Czesl´aw, 2 Mitteleuropa, 12, 23, 24 Mohács, battle of, 16, 74, 75, 237 Mokotów field, 110, 111 Moldavia, Principality of, 92, 93, 94, 95 Moldova, Republic of, 55n Molotov, Vyacheslav, 126, 130 Molnár, Tamás, 46 Mongols, 14, 25, 67 Montenegro, 26, 30, 217, 222, 223, 225, 246 Moraczewski, Jedrzej, 104 Moravia, 84 Mos´cicki, Ignacy, 114 Mount Athos, 98 Mudde, Charles, 151 Muhi, battle of, 75

254 Index Muslims, 220, 225, 229 Münz, Theodor, 16 Nagy, András, 44 Nagy, Ferkó, 73 Nagy, Imre, 43, 46 Nagy, Jenö, 47 Napoléon Bonaparte, 4 National Commission of Solidarity, 49 national identity, 32 Czech, 82, 84, 85 Croatian, 216, 220, 222, 231, 233n Romanian, 95, 99 Slovak, 41 national interest, 150, 152, 161, 166ff, 172, 173, 174 national minority, 216, 217ff, 228, 230, 231, 233n national self-determination, see selfdetermination national state legacy, 243 national symbol, 241–2 statehood, 2ff, 241 natives, use of term, 130ff, 216 Navrátil, Augustin, 42 New School, 19 New World, 18, 238 Nice Treaty, 190, 199, 200, 206, 208, 212n, 213n, 214n Nicolas, Saint, 92 Nitra, bishopric of, 14 NKGB (the People’s Commissariat of State Security), 127, 129, 130 NKVD (People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs), 126,128 non governmental organizations (NGOs), 182, 184ff Non-Partisan Bloc for Co-operation with the Government, 113 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), viii, xi, 20, 38, 163, 165, 174, 175, 178n Oder-Neisse border, 133 Olaf, King, 82 Old School, 19 Olechowski, Andrzej, 169 Oleksy, Józef, 193ff, 199, 201ff, 211n, 214n

Olomouc, of, 16 University Omerbas ic´, Sevko, 225 Onufrie, Archbishop, 97 Open Society Foundation, 225 Oravcová, Marianna, 16 Orbán, Viktor, 152–3 Organization for Security and Collaboration in Europe, 40, 222 Orthodox Church, 28, 216, 221, 224, 246 Ossowski, Stanisl´aw, 132, 133, 137 Ost, David, 174 Ostrihom, archbishopric of, 14 Ottoman Empire, 25, 74, 95 Ottoman occupation of Hungary, 238 Ottoman Turks, 13, 15, 96 Panslavism, 26 Patrona Hungariae, 64 Paderewski, Ignacy Jan, 102, 105, 112 Pajewski, Janusz, 116 Palacký, Frantis ek, 26, 28, 29 Pálinkás, Robert, 47 Palmer, Alan, 12 Pan Tadeusz, 109 Papacostea, S¸ erban, 95, 97 Papal States, 25 Paraskeva of Ias¸ i, Saint, 92 Paris Peace Conference and the creation of multinational states, 27, 239 and the principle of selfdetermination, 27, 239 peace treaties, 12, 27 Patoc ka, Jan, 2 patron saints cult of, 63ff, 81ff, 88, 89, 92ff, 98 institution of , 92 mediaeval, 92ff national, 92–7 Pázman, Cardinal Peter, 15 Peace Group for Dialogue, 46 Pécs, University of, 15, 16 Pehe, Jiri, 39 Petofi, Sándor, 29, 46, 67, 71 Petre, bishop, 97 Phare, 183, 185 Philothea of Arges¸ , Saint, 92 Pil´sudski, Jozef, 102ff, 126, 242 Pil´sudski Square (Plac Pilsudskiego), 109

Index 255 Pinior, Jozef, 50 Pithart, Petr, 86 Polák, Stefan, 42 Poland, ix, 23, 24, 29, 33, 37, 39, 42, 55, 98, 102ff, 150ff, 159ff, 189ff, 244 Alliance of the Democratic Left (Sojusz Lewicy Demokratycznej or SLD), 162, 165, 167, 169, 178n Citizens’ Militia, 137 civil society, 47ff Committee for Social Resistance (Komitet Oporu Spolecznego or KOS), 47 Government-in-exile, 126,128 Justice and Home Affairs (JHA), 198, 209 Independence Day (11 November 1918), 107, 110, 114, 119n, 120n, 122n, 242 January Rising (1863), 112 Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwos´c´ or PiS), 153, 161, 162 lost lands, 125 League of Polish families (Liga Polskich Rodzin or LPR), 153, 172 Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 125 Ministry of Recovered Lands, 135 Movement for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights (Ruch Obrony Praw Czl´owieka i Obywatela or ROPCiO), 47 National Christian Union (Zjednoczenie Chrzes´cijansko Narodowe or ZChN), 162, 168, 170 National Council of the Homeland, 130, 133 National Movement (Ruch Narodowy or RN), 170 nation-state, 243 Obóz Zjednoczenia Narodowego (OZON), 113 Office of Public Security, 133, 135 Polish-Czechoslovak Solidarity, 50 Polish Communists, 124ff Polish Kingdom (1916), 102 Polish Legions, 103, 106, 111, 113, 115, 116 Polish–Lithuanian Union

Polish Military Organization (Polska Organizacja Wojskowa) (POW), 103 Polish National Committee (Komitet Narodowy Polski, KNP), 105 Polish Nationalists, 103 Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna or PPS), 50 Presidium of the Council of Ministers, 131 Provisional State Council, 102 Regency Council, 102, 103 Second Republic (1918–39), 102, 107, 115 Self-Defence (Samoobrona), 151, 170 Solidarity (Solidarnos c ), 47–8, 147 Solidarity Electoral Action (Akcja Wyborcza Solidarnoss´c´ or AWS), 162, 168, 169 State Office of Information and Propaganda, 134 Union of Polish Patriots, 124 Workers’ Defence Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotników or KOR), 47 political symbols, xi Polish Committee of National Liberation (Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego or PKWN), 124ff, 134 Polish Peasant Party (Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe or PSL), 161, 162, 168 Polish Workers’ Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza or PPR), 124, 130 Polish-Lithuanian Union, 25 Pomeranians, 131 Popovic´, Dinko, 224, 236n Popovici, Aurel, 28 Potsdam Conference, 135 Pospichal, Petr, 50 Prague, University of, 26 pre-accession strategy, 180, 181, 186 Pr emysl dynasty, 25 Protestantism see religion public opinion, 150, 151 Putna monastery, 97–98 qualified majority voting (QMV), 198ff, 208, 209, 213n Rac an, Ivica, 217–18 Racz, Sándor, 47

256 Index Radio Free Europe, 44 Radio Solidarity, 47 Rajk, Lázsló, 43, 45 Rákóczi, Ferenc, 67, 74 Rataj, Maciej Rathenau, Lutz, 37 Rebro, Karol, 16, 18 recovered lands, 130ff Reformation see religion religion, 14ff, 77 abbeys and monasteries, 14 Calvinists, 15, 65 Counter-Reformation, 15, 20, 25, 83, 238 importance of, 14ff Jesuits, 16, 83 Jews, 41, 65, 68, 124, 130, 139n, 229 Lutherans, 15, 16, 65 Protestantism, 41, 65, 67, 76, 132 Reformation, 15, 64, 76, 82, 147 religious orders, 14 Renaissance, 16, 147 repatriates, 130, 134, 138 Rijeka, University of, 223 rock opera, 63, 70ff Rokita, Jan Maria, 173 Roman, Petre, 97 Romania, ix, 24, 37, 41, 42, 55n, 217, 242, 246 Communist, 46, 94, 96 Orthodox Church, 93ff, 101n post-Communist, 92, 94, 99 Romanovs, 238 Romeyko, Marian, 106 Romeyko, Marian Roth, Joseph, 28 Rupnik, Jacques, 51 Russia, 25, 98 Soviet Union (USSR), x, 33, 36, 37, 39, 41, 42, 105, 124ff, 130, 138, 140n Russian Federation, ix, 147, 148 Russians, 92, 103, 109, 117 Saint Wenceslas Chorale, 83, 84, 85, 86 Sanader, Ivo, 218, 221, 230 Sarolt, 70, 74 Saxon kings, 81, 86 Schälicke, Rolf, 37 Schöpflin, George, 146 Sebestyén, Márta, 73

self-determination, principle of, 4ff, 18, 19, 20, 27, 29, 123ff, 215, 239, 241–2, 243 Sentiváni, Martin, 16, 17 Serbia, 13, 24, 26, 30, 215, 222, 223, 225, 246 Independent Democratic Serbian Party (Samostalna demokratska srpska stranka or SDSS,) 228 Serbs, 92, 216, 222, 226, 228, 230–1 sexual discrimination, 182 ‘short century’, 26 Sinkó, Katalin, 66 Slavic peoples, 25, 26, 29 cultural reciprocity (vzájemnost), 26 national self-consciousness, 25 nationalism as self-defence, 28 Slavici, Ioan, 95 Slovakia, 11ff, 23, 41, 84, 98, 179ff, 244 Central European designation, 12ff Communist era, 20, 46 European roots, 11ff Slovak Province, 12 Slovak Republic First, 12, 19 Second, 12, 19, 20 Slovenia, 23, 42 Slovins, 132, 141n Slowik, Adam, 50 S´migl´y-Rydz, Edward, 112 Snyder, Louis, 138 Sobieski, Jan III, 110 Sobe slav, Count, 85 socialist parties, 183 Solidarity (Solidarnos´c´) see Poland Solt, Ottilia, 46 Solzhenitsyn, Alexandr I., 37 Soviet Union, 19, 20, 240, 241 Spr, Karel, 39, 40 Stalin, Joseph, 50 Stambolijski, Aleksandar, 28 statehood see national state Stephen, King (Hungary), xi, 63ff, 82, 242 Stephen, Prince (Moldavia), xi, 93ff, 242 Stephen, Saint, cult of, 64ff Starzyn´ski, Stefan, 111–12 Steinhardt, Nicolae, 94 Strossmayer, Josip, 28

Index 257 Sudeten German Problem, 24, 30 Sudeten Germans, 88, 89 Supilo, Frano, 28 supranational institutions, 189, 191, 198, 202, 208 supranationalists, 191, 192 Svätopluk, King, 25 Sweden, 25 symbolism see national state Szatmár, battle of, 76 Szczerbiak, Aleks, 150, 151, 160, 164 Széchényi, István, 66 Szymanski, Julian Juliusz, 109 S iber, Ivo, 53 S ilhanová, Libus e, 41 S imonc ic , Jozef, 18 Spidla, Vladimir, 180 Taggart, Paul, 150, 151, 160, 164 Taksony, 64 Tamás, Gáspár Miklós, 45 Tapié, Victor-Lucien, 25 Tatalovic´, Sinis a, 232n Teleki, László, 66 Templin, Lotte and Wolfgang, 39 Teoctist, Patriarch, 97 Third Reich, 24 Thurzo, George, 15 Tibenský, Ján, 17 Tito, Josip Broz, 28 Titulescu, Nicolae, 28 Tocqueville, Alexis de, 53 Tomás ek, Frantis ek Cardinal, 41, 42 Tomko, Jozef Cardinal, 42 Topolánek, Mirek, 170 Torda, 72, 74 Toth, János, 45 transformation, post-Communist, 163, 180–3 transition, post-Communist, 147, 153 model of, 33, 34 Transylvania, 64, 65, 94 Trapczynski, Wojciech, 109 Trianon, Treaty of, 68, 75, 76, 166 Trnava, University of, 16ff, 20, 238 Trzcin´ski, Janusz, 193ff, 211n Tu man, Franjo, 216–17, 223, 227, 230 Turks (Ottoman), 16 Turkey, 123, 217 twinning, 183, 185

Ujazdowski, Kazimierz Michal´, 173 Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) see Russia Ukraine, 42, 55n, 97, 125, 126, 127, 129, 138n Ukrainians, 92 unemployment, 180, 186 Union of Poles in Germany, 133 UNESCO, 39, 222 USA, ix, 30, 105, 127, 130 Utraquists, 82 Vachudova, Milada Anna, ix Václav see Wenceslas Varlaam, Metropolitan, 93 Varsik, Branislav, 15 Vatican, 99 First Council, 28 Second Council, 224, 231 Vejvoda. Ivan, 146 Venice, Republic of, 25 Verba, Sidney, 35 Vidic´, Dus an, 228 Vienna, battle of (1683), 110 Congress of, 26 University of, 16, 17 Vietnam, 35, 55 Vitus (Veit), Saint, 82, 88 Vladimir, Archbishop, 97 Világos, battle, 75 Visegrád Group, 3 Voltaire, 146 Vörösmarty, Mihály, 66 Walachia, Principality of, 92, 93, 95 Wajda, Andrzej, 50 Wal´esa, Lech, 49, 50 Walzer, Michael, 147 Wandycz, Piotr S., 23, 147 Wegner, Bettina, 37 Wenceslas, Saint, xi, 81ff, 242 Wenceslas Codex, 83 Wenceslas Day, 85, 87, 88, 89 Wenzel see Wenceslas Western Europe, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, 13, 14, 18, 20, 24, 237–41, 243, 247 White Mountain, battle of, 83 Wieniawa-Dl´ugoszowski, Bolesl´aw, 106 Wilson, Woodrow, 19, 123

258 Index Witos, Wincenty, 102, 107 Wittbrodt, Edmund, 193ff, 199ff, 211n Wolf, Marek, 50 Wolff, Larry, 12, 238 Workers’ Party (Munkáspárt or MP), 151, 162, 163 World War, First, 4, 84, 102, 112, 115, 120n, 123, 239, 240, 242, 246 World War, Second, 5, 27, 30, 68, 69, 84, 102, 220, 240, 241, 243 Yalta Conference, 127, 145, 146 Yugoslav Academy of Arts and Sciences, 28

Yugoslavia, 25, 27, 35, 37, 39, 50, 52, 215, 220, 225 Young Plan, 27 Zaborska, Anna, 180 Zahradil, Jan, 170 Zagreb, University of, 16 Zambrowski, Roman, 130 Zeman, Milos , 87–8 Zion Evangelical Church, 38 Zilina, synod of, 15